Everything I Touch
by theshroomdude
Summary: Louise was a failure, a nothing, a zero. She couldn't forgive herself for that, and she couldn't forgive those that pointed it out to her. She's out to prove them wrong, or to at least learn to let go—it would have to be one or the other. After all, if you're gonna die, die with your boots on.
1. Till the Break of Dawn

**Everything I Touch**

_Chapter 1_

_Before the Break of Dawn_

"Lelouch, it's almost time," She reminded him, "so quit dithering." She was quite the insistent woman, proud of her ability to prod him. "Unless you'd like to be integrated, that is." Lelouch internally bemoaned his fate. But, perhaps that was befitting; she wasn't lying when she said he was prone to melodrama. Not that he was so vain as he once was. Stretching his sight once more, for nostalgia's sake, he took in what he supposed would be the last glimpses of what had been their home world. He supposed he was still rather vain, he had lived here for so long, and yet he prioritized nostalgia over the growing risk his continued presence here was causing. Perhaps he had simply come to recognize it and, in so doing, learned when was the proper time to be a peacock. And, truth be told, now was not the time. He did wish to prevent integration.

With that thought, Lelouch turned to face his traveling companion, and more importantly, their destination. A vibrantly luminescent hole in the fabric of their reality, ironically located in the fabric of their bed sheets. That was surely something that had set off his temper; the verdant hole through the pattern clashed rudely with the motif he had had in mind when they last renovated. And now they had naught on but their bedthings, and they had to rush out into some random reality. And, he was rather certain that even those wouldn't carry with them into wherever this gateway was headed. With that thought, he came to the decision that they might as well test his hypothesis.

"You know, like as not, we'll exit stripped of what dignity these things offer," he said as he proffered his hand. She seemed rather nonplussed by this, replying with a flick to his forehead before she accepted his outstretched hand. They both knew what that meant, and so it was left unsaid. It was mutually understood that they had run out of shame long ago.

Without further need for communication, they stepped forward. With a small tug on his hand, she sunk into the portal and he quickly followed suit. He quickly came to the upsetting conclusion that this portal was in fact conjured, and not a true gateway—conjured portals required a short travel time whereas true gateways existed as holes in reality that could be stepped through. That would surely complicate things, as magic tended to be rather disconcerting; always changing reality and twisting the land. And drama! For some reason, nearly every memory he had read that included magic was twisted with more drama than the vapid women of the Aries Villa could gossip up.

Bursting him from his colourful imagining of geese in court dresses was the revelation that they had, in fact, arrived. And, that they were summoned well above the ground. Inexorably, this lead to a quick meeting with gravity. He landed on his feet, the Grey Witch in his arms. This is not a suggested course of action, as he fractured the bones in his legs in several places, twisted an ankle, and tore a few muscles in his shoulders. Such was the price of chivalry, he figured, as said Witch righted herself and settled to his side.

They seemed to have landed themselves in a thick cloud of debris, as he had to strain himself to see his companion. And even then, all he could make out of her were brief glimpses between the mild coughing and blinking one's body demanded in such an environ. A quick exploration of the other senses lead him to the conclusion that they were, as he had predicted, stark naked. He had expected this, though there was likely to be a reaction of some sort from the natives when the dust settled. They stood at aloof attention and schooled their features as the air began to clear.

* * *

Louise held her breath as she watched her spell explode yet again. Or, so she tried. The truth of the matter was that she had been trying to properly cast the Familiar Summoning Spell for nigh on an hour, and that it was taking a heavy toll on her petite body. The smoke and debris from all her failed attempts only compounded this. Her breathing was severely laboured, and she had to bend over to catch her wind. She staggered in her attempt to right herself, but was saved from further embarrassment when she succeeded in that small endeavor. She was willing to give it one more go, and she knew that her Professor was as well. Most of the crowd had dissipated as it dawned on them that she was unlikely to successfully conjure a familiar, but the few that had heeded the Professor's word were willing to watch once more as well. They had jeered and spouted derisive things that made Louise tremble with frustration, but now they were all deathly silent. It was a somber affair; never before had someone actually failed all the allotted attempts, and to fail someone whom they all regarded as the most fervent student in the school was thought provoking.

Louise dusted off her skirt and attempted to look dignified as she frantically searched her mind for one last chant. She had gone through as many rehashings of the aria as she could think up. In fact, this last attempt was nearly blasphemous—it referenced witchcraft and demon lore. She had long ago lost heart, and her peers had long ago lost interest. It was simply principle that held her up, a vehement desire to prove herself and just not fail.

One last tug at her uniform to properly righted her blouse, then a tug to fix her reddish blonde hair and she was done. She figured it was best to face failure with a façade of self-confidence, and perhaps that was her saving grace, for when she was preparing to cast what would surely be her last attempt at magic for so long as she lived, she became acutely aware of a blurred outline hidden in the smoke.

She cast several quick glances to her fellows—glances seemed to be one of the few things she could always cast—and lo, they seemed to have caught on as well. Surely this meant that she was not, indeed, hallucinating. The smoke dissipated further to reveal that one outline had become two. Two rather casually intimate outlines, if her limited court training held true.

When the shroud finally cleared, they were all treated to the sight of something none of them had expected. Not only had Louise the Zero summoned a familiar, she had summoned two! And when she had claimed that the familiar she brought forth would be the most beautiful, she had not been exaggerating. Before them stood two of the most beautiful people Louise had ever laid eyes upon, in all their natural glory. A woman with waist length vibrant green hair and bright yellow eyes stood next to a violet eyed brunet that could only be described as beautiful, in all it's feminine implications. He didn't quite tower over his companion, at only half a head taller, but it was immediately obvious that they stood as equals. A complimentary pair, they possessed not quite an air of black and white so much as two different shades of grey. Which was the darker grey was something she felt not even her mother could divine. They both boasted pale complexions, and their features were gentle like porcelain, though Louise did not look further than was decent. It was after reviewing this line of thought that she came to the startling realization that these mysterious newcomers were, in fact, nude. It seemed that she was not the first to realize this though, as, to her dismay, Guiche—the school's resident blue eyed blond pretty boy—was quite openly ogling the both of them, and Kirche—a brazen dark-skinned redhead whose impressive bust had a following—was attempting to discreetly remove her own clothing; no doubt to assault her new familiars!

"Ah! I did it, didn't I Professor? Professor Colbert? I've done it! These are to be my familiars?" she asked with a desperate look to her robed professor. If she had done just it, then Brimir be damned if she wasn't entitled to feeling the greatest high of her life! "Does this mean that I pass? That I can continue under the school's tutelage? Oh, for all that is Holy, let it be the truth! I don't believe that I can come up with another chant," she insisted. After all, even if she succeeded again, certainly she would collapse from the effort.

The Professor seemed to snap back to reality from wherever his mind had taken him. The balding wizard was well known as rather scatterbrained, and his flights of fancy tended to confound even the most patient of students. "Well, Miss Vallière," he began, "I believe you'll have to finish the contract before I can call this a pass." He seemed hopeful, so Louise let herself feel that her hope was not unfounded. If she could just form a contract with even one of these people, then she could avoid the fate of an early marriage. If there was one thing she disliked above all others, it was the thought of being a token wife in some loveless political marriage. The attentions of her professor snapped her out of her musings, "Miss Vallière? Do I need to remind you of the procedure? Or would you rather just ogle them with mister Gramont?"

"I—" she started, "I know what to do, and Guiche had best turn his lecherous gaze elsewhere!" Namely, she'd prefer if he kindly jumped into one of his magical mole's holes. "And Miss Zerbst will kindly replace her underthings from whence they came!" With those rather caustic remarks, Louise took her first steps towards what she hoped would be her new familiars. They were seemingly unfazed by what was occurring, and Louise found that much more unnerving than if they had shown some sign of distress. She wondered if perhaps she had accidentally summoned nobility from one of the neighboring countries; their carriage certainly seemed to point to such a conclusion. They were unflinching, and they seemed oddly amused by what would surely be a disturbing occasion to any commoner. Magic was not something the average laymen could witness without some outward sign of fear.

In a slight daze, she stopped at what was considered a respectful distance for greetings and began with a slight 'ahem'. "My name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière," she addressed them politely, but not with any more respect than should be expected from someone of her station and lineage, and politeness seemed to be the best way to avoid displaying how flustered speaking to two completely bare strangers was making her. "I have, just now, performed the Springtime Familiar Summoning rite, and you, sir, madame, seem to have been the outcome. This begs the question: 'Have you answered my summons?'"

They stood motionless for the better half of a minute, and Louise began to wonder if they could understand her, but the silence seemed to convey that they were having a silent conversation somehow, and so Louise persevered. The young couple stepped forward and the man began, "Miss Vallière, we have—" he paused ever so slightly, and the woman to his side picked up where he left off, "—come upon your summoning." Their words seemed odd, as if they hadn't spoken in the longest of times, and so were unused to the feel of speaking. They seemed polite, although Louise couldn't shake the feeling that they were bemused by the whole situation. Regardless, she came here to seal the contract, but now she was left with the small conundrum of which one to seal it with first. Would she be able to form a contract with both? If not, which would make for a better familiar? It would be terribly embarrassing to kiss either of them, and she was loath to choose between them.

"Then the contract must be completed," Louise said, "so, would you please lean," she indicated to the ground between them, "forward a bit?" She decided that, if she must kiss someone, then let her first kiss be lost to a beautiful man. With such uncharacteristically amorous thoughts in mind, she closed her eyes, raised her wand, and began the final step as she prayed by all that was good that she would not have to attempt this spell more than once. "My name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers; bless this humble being, and make him my familiar." She leaned forward to meet this strange new man, and pressed her lips to meet someone else's for the first time in her life.

When she pulled away and opened her eyes, she was shocked to find that the couple was all that she could see. She seemed to be in some disturbing place that emitted this strange feeling of otherness. Surely this did not happen when one formed a familiar contract, these odd visions and the feeling of curiosity this place seemed to have in her were not natural. And then they vanished, replaced instead by what must be a witch of ancient magicks and her demon familiar. They spoke in unison, "It seems that you are in need," the words formed on their lips but came from elsewhere, "but that can be amended. Choose a contract that would reflect your need," the witch stepped forward, and Louise experienced visions of a life of adversity and sacrifice that culminated in respect and strength. "Or, perhaps you would prefer the contract that would reflect your desire," the demon stepped forward, once more aside the witch, and Louise saw in vivid detail a life of happiness and ease. She saw gifts and adoration and recognition; all the things she'd ever wanted, all she could possibly ever want. And then the visions of grandeur ended, and she was once more faced with the devilish couple, and now, a choice.

Louise had never had such a choice before, but she knew that to make a contract with such creatures was unnatural. It was unmoral, immoral, evil. It went against the foundations of her belief to sign such a tempting contract, for surely the unspoken price was her soul. "I will do no such thing. I choose to remain unfettered by contracts with such empty promises. In the name of the Founder Brimir, I demand you release me from this chaotic waste!"

* * *

And then, she opened her eyes again. It appeared that nothing had changed, she had just had one of the most terrifying visions ever described, and then nothing. Reality returned. She had apparently lost herself in the final magic of the sealing contract, as Professor Colbert recounted that she had kissed the young man, and then she had fallen unconscious. The young couple, who chose to withhold their names, had informed the teacher that the contract had been formed, and that she had apparently lost consciousness from casting so many spells in such a short period of time. So fatigue, that was it. She had a terrible vision caused by fatiguing her supply of willpower, that was comforting in an odd way. She could very well have died from such a condition, but at least those haunting visions weren't some wicked curse cast by a religious radical.

After mulling over this for some few seconds, Louise turned her senses outwards. She was in her room in the Academy, and all seemed well. Professor Colbert was standing at her bedside, but he was the only addition to the room—she was resting in bed, her armoire on the other wall; the door was to her left, past the table, and the night sky could be seen out the window to her right—nothing worrisome. "I will be fine, please give them my thanks when next you see them," she placated the worried teacher, he really was one of the nicest people at the Academy. He never gave up on her, and she regarded him as something of a silly uncle. But she was fine, and so she asked that he vacate a young lady's room, for his presence disturbed her rest. She felt a twinge of guilt at manipulating the man, but she truly was fine and she was sure that the doting wizard would forgive her.

She sighed as she sat up in bed, it was nighttime, yet she felt restless. How long had she been incognizant? She felt that she was the only one awake in the school, but knew that the staff would be preparing breakfast at this hour. She shuffled over to the window to watch the night sky and let her mind wander to the things that lead to her being here. She wondered what things the next day would hold. She wondered, and she soon lost herself in thought. Which was abruptly halted when she realized there was a person to either side of her. "And where did you two come from?" She wasn't too worried, the newcomers had shown no malice before, and now was not the time to panic, surrounded and without a wand as she was.

"Don't you recognize your own familiars, Mistress Vallière?" the man to her right groused. "Or perhaps if we disrobed, you'd remember?" They both seemed entirely unbothered by the idea, and it was so terribly. . . scandalous! Louise couldn't help but blush at the thought of her familiars doing such a thing, but found it difficult to verbalize.

"I—I think not," she attempted to word this carefully, but her embarrassment seemed to be bleeding through so obviously. "If you truly are my familiars, as you said, then I think it best if you don't cloud my mind with such thoughts as," well, as what? As them jumping out of the clothing they had mysteriously procured and pouncing on her with less than innocent intentions? She couldn't tell them that, but they needed an answer, "thoughts such as that." And of course they knew just what she had been thinking, because Louise was a terrible liar and her voice had been so thick, like she was some sort of pervert.

"You have questions. We might answer a few," this time it was the woman. Louise was beginning to wonder what to ask when the immediately obvious came to her.

"Your clothes, where did they come from? You aren't truly a student of the Academy, sir. And I've never seen a maid hold herself in such a manner, ma'am." A silly question, true, but it was something that Louise couldn't help but ask.

"Not a 'Who are you?' or why we accepted the summons?" The man seemed either a tad miffed, or he was enjoying this. Louise couldn't rightly tell, and it worried her. Her question had been rather rude, in hindsight. But surely they would forgive her such a minor insult.

"I—" she began to apologize.

"We stole them," was their resounding, at least to Louise, answer.

Well if that wasn't improper. They didn't seem the least bit worried that they'd be caught. They didn't care that they could be charged with impersonating staff and impersonating nobility? That was what the clothing signified, so they must understand.

"Well, then who are you two? I'm not familiar with the foreign nobility," which was to be expected; a token wife need not know much of politicking, and a successful Mage would have to learn such things from life experience. And as she was to be one or the other, she was never taught much of foreign politics.

"We are your familiars," the woman replied.

"Yes, certainly you already know this, Miss Louise?" the dark haired one offered. It appeared that her familiars had a sense of humor, but she was in no mood for such things.

"No, your names! Your families! You're nobility from elsewhere, correct? Gallia? You don't appear Germanian. Gallia, right?" Truly, they didn't deserve such a berating, Louise couldn't read anything from them, but surely they knew what her question had implied!

"Names? You may call me L.L., and this is my accomplice C.C.," he said. And then he said nothing more.

"And . . ." she trailed off.

"And that's all you get to know," the newly labeled C.C. said in such a thickly saccharine tone as to be painful, but it made their position on further questions of the matter completely clear. There would be no further answers on the topic, if any topic. This was aggravating to Louise, as she had hoped she had just made new political allies, but now she didn't even know if these people were simply merchants, or perhaps they came from some distant land across the Sahara.

"Could I at least call you L and C? If you're going to answer so cryptic—"

"No! I detest that man!" L.L. interrupted quite violently.

"—ally." L or C, one of them was apparently a figure that L.L. detested, and so she did not push the subject further. "You answered my summons, it seems, to confound me," she whispered. To her chagrin, that statement seemed to be holding true; she couldn't help but wonder why. After some few minutes of silent brooding, she decided to ask another question. "And . . . you'll promise to be my Familiars? To stay and be at my side?" Louise could tell that her tone wasn't far from begging, but she was not above begging in such situations.

There was a long period of time in which nothing was said after that. They stayed, and they all watched the stars. Louise couldn't shake the feeling that there was yet another silent conversation occurring between her Familiars, yet every time she checked to her sides C.C. and L.L. both seemed completely absorbed with stargazing. It was unsettling, but they stayed, and that was what was important.

"Dawn is just beyond the horizon," C.C. put forth gently. And it was, so Louise was left with the decision of what to do. She had plenty of time, and she hadn't bathed the day before. She nodded her goodbye and went to find the public bath. It was entirely empty, as young nobles rarely woke so early. It was quiet and the water wasn't kept nearly as warm as it would be if it was crowded, but it was peaceful and Louise was able to relax. She was able to make it to breakfast in time, though she hadn't much of an appetite, and so she chose to head back to her chambers. They were still there when she returned to her room, though they had shifted to watch the sunrise from the edge of the bed. The both of them struck a strange silhouette that contrasted with her normally empty room, but it was a contrast that she felt she'd grow accustomed to.

* * *

When finally it was time for classes to begin, she told them as much, though they seemed to already know before she started telling them. The Tristain Academy of Magic was a sprawling campus with several floors and a myriad of ways to traverse between any two given points, yet they knew the way. That was an oddity that she was starting to notice, they knew almost everything before she told it to them; they could not be surprised. But such a trivial matter, she decided, was not important in the face of recent events. And she hadn't the time to think about trivial matters when class would be joining soon. And after class, she'd have to do something about getting her new Familiars some appropriate clothing. It was entirely disconcerting, the way she, a second year student, was being followed by what appeared to be a third year student and a maid of the school.

When they finally did reach the class, her peers had already found seats, and it appeared that they were the last students to the small auditorium classroom. Not that that bothered Louise. She had no friends to speak of and disliked crowds, so it was some small comfort to be the last. If only she wasn't the last in application of the school's teachings as well. She'd expected cries of 'Zero' and 'just quit' when she entered. And that was what she got from those that left early the day before. None of those that had stayed as told joined in, which she found odd. But it wasn't so bad, at least they weren't participating; maybe she had earned some form of begrudging respect from them, she could only hope it was that. Then her Familiars entered behind her and a look of equal parts confusion and interest formed on all of the student's faces, even those that had stayed seemed piqued, though it was likely because of their choice of dress. She really would have to get that straightened out. The students soon seemed to lose interest in both her and her Familiars as they began gossiping and trying to figure out who these odd newcomers she had come across were. In the respite from their attentions, Louise shuffled to her seat, and because her Familiars' stations elsewhere alluded her, she could not deny them the courtesy of the adjoining seats.

As her familiars sat at the desk with her, the class once again took notice of them, their confusion more than evident. But now was not the time to bother them for answers, as the teacher promptly entered, and that ended all chatter. Louise recognized Professor Chevreuse, a slightly rotund woman with an easy smile—and, inexplicably her familiars recognized her as well. Perhaps they were older than they looked and had attended the Academy before? But then surely Professor Colbert wouldn't have had to ask for their names, they were not the type to be so easily forgotten. Then they had met her elsewhere? Unlikely, Professor Chevreuse was a minor noble that preferred teaching to travel. Come to think of it, she was probably offered the teaching job right out of the Academy. That was a new way to look at it; Miss Chevreuse may very well have not left the school since she began as a student in her teen years. Now looking at the Professor in a new light, Louise began to actually listen. ". . . joy seeing the new familiars that are summoned each spring." The Professor was a tad vain, but she wasn't unkind, so most students didn't mind. "Well, Miss Vallière," she was addressing not only Louise, but the entire class, it seemed, "You either picked up some new friends, or these are your new Familiars, as Mister Colbert described them." And that caused the class to erupt with—well—with something. It wasn't quite shock, perhaps a few had figured it out, but it wasn't the most disbelieving sound she'd ever heard either. It seemed that they didn't know what to think of someone having two Familiars, let alone two humans.

"Y—yes! They are what came out! I swear!" she was just a little defensive, nothing more. "They—" she paused to collect her thoughts, "This is L.L., and this is C.C.," she said as she gestured to her respective Familiars. "And they are in need of some proper apparel, as they are neither a student nor a handmaid. I'll have to send for some proper clothes from home, it seems." Louise cringed as she realized she was talking of things of little consequence.

"Yes, I thought as much, Miss Vallière," the teacher said as she made for the front of the room, leaving Louise to her thoughts.

"Now then, on with the lesson." She paused for effect, "My Runic name is 'Red Clay.' Chevreuse the Red Clay. This year, I will be teaching you all the magic of the Earth element. Does any one here know the four great elements? Mister Guiche perhaps?" She tended to favour those that shared her affinity for Earth Magic.

"Yes, Miss Chevreuse! They are Earth," he stressed that one, the self-important fop, "Fire, Water, and Wind."

"And combined with the now-lost element of 'Void,' there are five elements in total—as everyone should already know. Of the five elements, I believe Earth holds an extremely important position. This isn't just because my affinity is Earth, nor is it simply a personal preference." Well, if that wasn't such a blatant lie. Louise knew for a fact that most Mages like Professor Chevreuse believed in the unequivocal importance their element held in society. "The magic of Earth is very important magic that governs the creation of all matter. If it wasn't for Earth magic," and she paused again. Truly, Miss Chevreuse was pompous. "We wouldn't be able to produce or process necessary metals. Raising buildings from large boulders and harvesting crops would also involve much more work. In this manner, the magic of the Earth element is intimately related to everyone's life." And here her tone conveyed that it was the only element that was related to life.

It felt as though her Familiars had such an opinion as well, she felt as though there must be a silent conversation. That feeling was becoming annoying, and none of the other students seemed to have it—perhaps these were the latent effects of exhaustion. She certainly hoped so, at any rate; the alternative seemed to be that she was going mad. She slumped over her desk as she pondered this, momentarily ignoring the teacher as she went on about transmutation. Really, she was just reiterating basic theory, nothing major. They all knew how to turn pebbles into brass, though none of them could do it in practice as of yet. Louise figured that if she could get the spell right, she might turn them into flint or some such. But when the teacher asked for her to come up if 'She was going to ignore the lesson', she was terribly nervous. And it showed in her work; she transmuted the pebbles into an explosion. The rest of the class had been prepared, though. They had even tried to warn the teacher about her, though it sounded so much more like they were insulting her. Her Familiars were the only ones that stayed still, yet they seemed the least affected by the explosion—she was going to have to ask them how they did that. If they hadn't known about her success rate before, something she doubted, what with them knowing everything else, then they definitely knew now.

Louise was not to be daunted, though; she dusted herself off and held herself straight. A similar method had worked when she summoned her familiars, so hopefully it would work in this situation. If it did, Louise decided, then she would make this a routine. Her explosions were already routine anyways, so why not have a plan to deal with them? "Will someone please take Miss Chevreuse to a water Mage? She's been knocked out," that was Kirche, which was exceedingly odd. The voluptuous red haired girl should have taken this as another chance to tease her, but she was being helpful, if not quite amicable.

"Zerbst? What do you want? I don't need your pity." Because really, she may dust herself off and hold herself high, but she was thoroughly upset. She had hoped for some change, even a tiny bit of progress. After all, hadn't she succeeded in not one, but two spells yesterday? But no, nothing.

"Then please forgive me my pity, for it is yours," Kirche retorted. So it was that, she truly felt sorry for her? A Zerbst should never do such a thing, did she not understand proper decorum? Their houses had feuded for generations, now was an odd time to break tradition. "My Ardent passion is not so distinct from compassion, I will help you. Your failure may have been spectacular," she seemed oblivious to how rude that sounded, "but your success was undeniable. There must be something redeeming about you, and I intend to discover it!" So she was curious? Well Louise didn't wish to clean the room by herself, and her Familiars had mysteriously disappeared with the rest of the class.

"Fine, Zerbst. So be it. Just don't get in the way."

* * *

Professor Jean Colbert of the Tristain Academy of Magic, Colbert the Flame Serpent, or as the students called him when they believed he couldn't hear them, Colbert the Wandering, was considered by most to be a competent teacher. By some he was considered a silly old tinkerer; by a small few, he was a point of terror. But the same could be said for most people, and so he did not dwell on it. He instead on all of the things no one else seemed to take notice of; he knew his way through the school almost as if he designed it, he knew that the only place without stone walls was the servants quarters, and that there were exactly one hundred and eight thousand books in the annals. Though, sometimes Miss Longueville, the Headmaster's Secretary, consulted him on things about the school; she was an interesting woman, he was considering asking her to the upcoming Ball of Frigg. He was naturally curious, and that was why he found himself going off to investigate things when he could.

He was currently en route to Miss Chevreuse's class, as there had been a loud popping sound that usually accompanied the spells of his most interesting student, Miss Vallière. Not that all of her attempts exploded, sometimes nothing spectacular happened at all, which was oh so vexing. But that track of thought sputtered out when he was abruptly stopped by a large crowd of sooty students rushing down the hall from the direction he was headed. It appeared that his hunch had been correct. He found himself incapable of pushing against so many upset younger people, and when he finally escaped from the thinning crowd, he found that he was much farther from his destination than he had been earlier. Such was fate, he guessed; he was always finding things.

Taking a small second to reorient himself, he made to head back. He knew the school like he knew his element, and the time he'd been working with them was not so different: most of his life, really.

Such idle thoughts proved pointless, as he rudely walked into someone on his way there. Making to apologize, he stood up and offered his hand to none other than one of Miss Vallière's Familiars, the male one to be precise. The green haired woman had easily dodged him, he found, and let him bump into her companion. What an odd dynamic these two had with each other, it was truly flummoxing, but Colbert lived for the flummoxing, and so he enjoyed what little he'd talked with them. They'd come to him whilst Miss Vallière was unconscious, and the conversation had been ever so interesting. He felt that there was so much more to these two than could ever be guessed, and yet they gave nothing away whilst hinting at so much.

"Ah, all apologies, Mister L.L. I should pay more attention to my surroundings, I guess." Colbert was never much of an eloquent speaker, which he supposed made sense; most of the ideas he wished to discuss didn't have words for them yet, and so he'd made it a habit to be as direct as possible, to avoid confusion.

"Think nothing of it, Jean, L.L. should pay more attention to where he walks." That was just one of their oddities, they insisted on his first name. Everyone but his mother used his surname, so it really was jolting, he'd almost not recognized they were addressing him at first. And they seemed to constantly prod each other, even when there wasn't a word being said. That was fascinating, in a way, like all things.

"I'll consider that," he gave that a small 'hmm', everything about him tended to be inquisitive. "Now where was . . . Ah! I was just going to check on Miss Vallière, has something happened? It sounded like an explosion."

"Louise is . . . preoccupied," C.C.'s voice was full of innuendo, "with . . . Miss Zerbst," and L.L's tone implied the same. It was uncanny, the way these two spoke so fluidly as a unit. He'd love to ask them how they did—

"Whah . . . ?" It seemed he was even more inarticulate than usual, being flustered did that to a man. "You're not suggesting . . . ?"

"Suggesting what, Jean?" Colbert couldn't tell if L.L. was mocking him or not, these two were so unreadable, "They're busy." Well, now Colbert was uncertain if he wanted to know just what they were doing. In fact, he'd rather not risk it. If he caught something occurring, they'd have to be expelled, and he couldn't do that to his students. He decided that emergency diversionary tactics were in demand.

Colbert turned to walk with them, away from where he had been headed. "So, what's it like being Familiars? I take it Miss Vallière isn't too much trouble," he started; small talk would never be one of his strengths.

"Oh, it's not so bad, Jean. I believe she wanted to get us a proper wardrobe, though. Is this not flattering enough?" And yes, it was quite flattering indeed. The maid uniforms were supposed to be, they were the highest quality uniforms outside of the royal palace.

"Well . . . ah . . ." he sputtered. "Miss Vallière cares deeply for decorum," he mustered up. And that was such a poor answer, Colbert had meant to mention class separation taboos and impersonation laws, but they always seemed to twist his intentions and imply something that he hadn't thought of.

"I suppose you're right. Well, what's a Familiar to do? It's not like we—" and that's where Colbert jumped in, cutting her off in the hope of avoiding more embarrassing conversation. And now she was visibly miffed, but if he could avoid more insinuations, he didn't mind so much. Surely they'd forgive him if he asked.

"That's right! We've completely ignored the fact that you're Familiars! Human Familiars are unprecedented, what think you of that?" They didn't have any opinion on the matter, from the look, but Colbert was desperate to avoid their befuddling subjects, so he kept on. "Actually, there should be some type of Rune somewhere on each of you, if you're Familiars." He paused to take a look at them. "I can detect that you're her Familiars when you're near Miss Vallière, and yet I can't see the Rune marking." They seemed complacent to ignore him, or at least they were unwilling to answer that admittedly indirect question. "They aren't somewhere hidden somewhere . . . indecent, are they?"

He realized that he had just walked into something vile, and so waited for them to reproach him, and yet nothing did come. "No, Jean. They're right here," L.L. pointed to the back of his and C.C.'s left hand.

Another conundrum, it seemed. Colbert prided himself on always finding things, and yet when he spoke to these two, the only things he found were embarrassment and confusion. There were no obvious markings on either of their hands, in fact, he likened their skin to unmarred alabaster. Was there some secret to seeing it? He hadn't gotten a good look at them before they ran off and found clothes, so he had no clue if they were lying about it not being hidden under fabrics. But, confounding as they were, they seemed generally good-natured, and so he had to believe them. But that got him nowhere! Where were their Runes? If they were there, why couldn't he see them? Had they cast some strange magic on them? They seemed like nobles, so surely they knew magic. But Colbert didn't think such a spell existed that could bend light. Then . . . firstborn magic? That was unlikely, he'd never heard of a meeting with an elf that didn't lead to a violent confrontation in the elf's favour.

Whatever the answer was, he would not find it today it seemed, as whilst he had been preoccupied with his thoughts, they had arrived. Where they had arrived wasn't immediately obvious to him, but when he realized, he couldn't help but let out a small sound of surprise. How had they lead him here? How did they know the layout of the school so well, only being here for a day, that they could lead him back without turning around? "Miss Chevreuse's classroom? But aren't they in there? We wouldn't want to disturb them. Privacy is important, and-and-and a thing of beauty!" He was nearly reduced to incoherence at the thought of what could be going on behind those doors, and yet they just . . . walked in! Well, if they did that, certainly it must be safe. Unless they intended to join in, which he decided wouldn't be so terrible. If he walked in as they were disrobing, he might find out if there were any Runes on them without having to ask for them to strip for him.

"Thinking will solve nothing here," he muttered to himself as he stood before the door and prepared to enter.

Said door abruptly swung outwards.

* * *

"Oh, Professor Colbert, I'm ever so sorry!" Louis bolted down, "I didn't know you were there," she said as she cast a dark glance at C.C. and L.L., who had followed her out.

"It's fine, Miss Vallière. Today seems to be a day for getting knocked over," he replied with an apologetic look to her Familiars that she decided to ignore.

"Good, I was worried that today would be a day for knocking out teachers instead," she said. And then she realized what she'd just said.

"Professor Chevreuse?" was Professor Colbert's disappointed reply.

"Yes," she said quietly. "But it was an accident! And I'm really sorry, and we cleaned up the room!"

"We?" he paused. "You mean Miss Zerbst? That's what you were busy with in there?"

"Yes, I helped Louise pick up after her failed attempt at transmutation blew up in Professor Chevreuse's face!" Kirche cheerfully added as she exited into the hall. "She'll be fine, I had Tabitha take her to a Water Mage for healing." Louise wondered about Tabitha, she'd never actually spoken with the bookish girl, but Kirche seemed to be her only friend. Louise had been thinking of approaching her, but she was a bit too standoffish, and whenever she thought there was a chance, the girl pulled out a book.

"Is there something you need, Professor?" Louise asked; she didn't really know why the man would come all the way over here. He had seemed more relieved by what Kirche had said than the situation merited. Professor Colbert had never been particularly close with Professor Chevreuse—unless they were secret flames? Unlikely. Then another reason? Unlikely. The most likely answer, she decided, was that Professor Colbert was silly.

"No, I think not. If all is well, then I have no further reason to be here. Please go about your business," he said, his tone almost pleading. Had he something to do, and this was just an unwanted diversion from his schedule? He seemed almost too ready to go, almost flying down the halls. Actually, by the look of it, he was levitating between steps to extend his gait. Well that was odd. And that look he gave her Familiars before he left . . . Professor Colbert was such a silly man.

"Well, Zerbst," she turned to face Louise now that she was being addressed, she'd been staring at her Familiars, "thank you for assisting me, I take it your curiosity is sated?" Perhaps her tone was a bit too harsh, but Kirche had outright stated that she wasn't helping Louise out of altruism; so if Louise was a bit resentful, she felt it was justified.

"For the now, Louise," Kirche said as she tossed her hand in the air in a perfunctory farewell. Louise opened her mouth to reprimand her for referring to her so casually, but it really wasn't a battle that she felt was worth it. Too much had happened so far, and it was only midday. Her energy was best saved for other, more important, things that were likely to happen, such as shouting at people that teased her.

Louise stood idly by the door, now that her company had all fled. Her Familiars weren't truly company, so much as expected presences, though she wasn't actually used to them yet. But they weren't much for conversation, as far as could be told. So far, they'd mostly stayed in the background. The little she'd spoken to them seemed to reflect that they had some inordinately large pools of sage advice for people their age. So, they weren't truly company.

"Shall we go for lunch?" That seemed to capture their attention, maybe they were hungry. They were thin, but they looked healthy, if not muscle-clad.

"That would be delightful, Louise," L.L. answered. C.C. Seemed to glare at him, and then he put forward a question, "You wouldn't happen to know if pizza is on the menu, would you?" He let out an audible sigh, though at the word 'pizza', they both seemed to perk up. But Louise could only shake her head at their antics—and because she lacked that knowledge.

"I am unfamiliar with that dish, but I don't believe so, you may wish to check the kitchens some time." They made no indication that they would do as suggested though, so she just blew it off as one of their growing list of idiosyncrasies. "Another time, then," she added as they entered the dining hall.

* * *

The trio had just finished lunch, which had suffered from an acute pizza shortage, and they were now headed off to her chambers to retire for the evening. The meal had begun with thanks to the Queen and the Founder Brimir, understandable she supposed; the Queen was the leader of the county's autocracy, after all. Duly noted, however, was that they'd never met this Founder of the Brimiric faith. They'd certainly heard plenty of his name since coming here, though they'd never heard word of him from any of the few supernatural beings they'd spoken with. And neither she nor Lelouch had ever had any particular interest in religious texts or memories, those tended to be far too dogmatic for their tastes, so it wasn't unlikely that he was real. They'd have to question someone about it, she supposed. Lelouch wanted to speak to the staff, as they'd done after first meeting Jean, but she would rather just ask the readily available Mage they were bonded to.

Their 'Little Master', as they'd taken to calling her in private, was rather lax, it seemed. They'd been here for little more than a day, and already she'd given up on understanding them. That just wouldn't do, they'd decided, though they didn't plan on rectifying it quite yet. In the meanwhile, they could always entertain themselves with young-spirited Jean—he was a fun one, always asking questions. Some of his questions were a bit troublesome, but they could always twist that in their favour. Lelouch had actually proposed that the first one to get him to run away screaming would get bragging rights. And bragging rights are a huge deal when you live forever and neither of you can forget anything, as they can always be brought back up. C.C. usually won their verbal battles, as she had all the juice on Lelouch's childhood, but occasionally he came from nowhere and swept her off her feet with something particularly embarrassing.

Louise was an interesting child, she'd come right out and thrown their contract back at their faces, which had never occurred as a possibility to them. But the event left the poor child in shock, and so they'd had to knock her out to give her mind some time to rationalize what had happened to her. When Lelouch had proposed they accept the Familiar contract, she'd balked at the thought, but now she was coming to appreciate the choice—a point her Demon Emperor was currently lauding over her. The petite strawberry blonde had earned herself several points by simply remaining calm when they surprised her at the window; she seemed to have a basic understanding of proper behaviour regarding stressful situations, though they both agreed that that had been no fun and they would have to give her a proper fright.

All together, this world was proving to be an interesting change of pace; they hadn't left C's world in . . . what must have been millennia, not that they'd minded. The only real negative was the lack of pizza, but she was sure that that would be amended—after all, she'd infected Lelouch with her addiction, if to a much lesser degree. Well, and his name, that was a definite drawback. C.C. thought of herself as C.C., her name was reserved for special occasions, but Lelouch had to just go out and copy her. One of the most well read beings in existence, and he has to copy her naming convention; she'd yet to forgive him for that, and so he was hers to command, something she was relishing.

'Quiet, Witch. Thinking will solve nothing, leave it be.' Lelouch tended to get antsy whenever she thought about pizza, which she made note of and used to her advantage. After all, the way to stay a happy couple seemed to be to make each other as miserable as possible in all possible situations, and he tended to answer in kind, though he used his mind. He functioned under the belief that being able to beat her at chess invalidated much of her authority and reestablished status quo ante bellum; Total War of affections, as it were.

In response to his complaint, she simply ignored him and taunted him with one of those wan smiles she knew he liked. That was the end though, they'd broken even—for now—one of them would pick it back up at a more appropriate time. The group had reached Louise's room, and no doubt she would have questions to ask—after some fun, at least.

* * *

Louise had been brooding over her Familiars—apparently enough to draw a couple looks during dinner, if she went by what L.L. had told her on the short walk to her chamber. She was brimming with questions, many of them admittedly either banal or personal. But a few of them she felt she ought to know, such as if they were somehow capable of reading minds, what with all they knew before she could tell them. And what were their capabilities? What level of magic were they capable of? Or what were their elemental affiliations? She had many questions along these lines. Or she did, until she sat on her bed and looked at them.

L.L. had walked in with this placid look on his face, and yet he had this mischievous glint in his eyes. In the background it was no better; C.C. had the same glint to her eyes accompanied by a crooked half-grin, like she'd done something naughty. All she'd done was lock the door . . . She'd locked the door. Well this didn't look good. Maybe they really were mind-readers, and they knew what she'd thought last night! No, no, no! That shouldn't be right! Hopefully they wouldn't!

Louise couldn't help but go slack-jawed at the thought of what they were going to do to her, and then she was thinking about how they could probably hear what she was thinking, and then what they'd do with that knowledge, and-and-and it was such a vicious cycle! And she was so embarrassed, and her mind was so dirty! And now they were walking—no, sauntering over to her! Were they really going to seduce her? They'd only just met! They couldn't be so bold, could they? And yet, she'd kissed one of them! Had they mistaken that for something more?! And now they were crawling towards her, and she was shrinking back onto into her bed. But they just kept getting closer, and she'd never done such a thing before. But they were so beautiful . . . and if they insisted . . .

"P-p-p-please be gentle with me!" Louise finally squeaked out. "I-I've never d-d-done this b-before!" And she was so pitiful! But they just kept this slow crawl to either side of her! She was surrounded, and it was dark, and she didn't have any choice! They were just too much for her! And . . . And . . .

"Why, whatever would you mean, Lit-tle-Lou-ise?" C.C. whispered out.

And then she realized that she wasn't nearly as close as she'd thought. Her Familiars were seated on either edge of the bed, staring at her innocently, far too innocently, but the mischievous look was gone. Had she imagined it? She must have, she quickly decided. It was all in her head! Yes, that was it! "N-nothing," she managed to stutter out. She needed to reign in her imagination—but out of the hovel and into the gutter seemed to be the only way! "What are you d-doing in my bed!" she squealed.

"We're sleeping, Master. Is there anything else to do in a bed?" L.L. replied; again, too innocently. But she couldn't say that, and the last few minutes had left her drained, so she simply collapsed into her pillow and resolved to do something about the sleeping arrangements some other time.

ODD#I(e)/5,iii;69Cfn3178

AN:

Bedthings is a perfectly plausible word for the English language, and it simply came out as I was typing. It should be a rather self explanatory word, but if you were wondering, in this case, it was used as a term that encompassed both flannel pajamas and a négligée.

OBSOLETE: THE FOLLOWING IDEA HAS BEEN DROPPED  
Noiret (pronounced something like nwahr-ay) is derived from French, which may have lead to some confusion. I found it some time ago in its feminine form 'noirette' (nwahr-et). I felt that it fit better than 'blacket', or 'raven haired', and that it maintained flow in this sentence. I'm likely to use verdette later, for the same reasons. I'm also considering coining 'fraisette' (frayz-et) to refer to Louise and family, fraise (frayz) being French being for strawberry. Feedback on your opinion of whether this is too cumbersome would be useful.

Also, there seems to be no way to indent. If it is indeed possible, It'd be nice if you could tell me how.

I am more than open to criticisms, please review. I've been trying to make it a habit of reviewing lately, please do the same for me.


	2. Astral Blood

**Everything I Touch**

_Chapter 2_

_Astral Blood_

It'd be more than a week before Louise could get a place for her Familiars to sleep—two couches, at least she thought they were couches, found at the market in Tristain. Each was a pasty grey, boxish, and filled with some unidentifiable material that her Familiars called 'memory foam' when she brought it back to them. They'd almost seemed surprised when she told them she'd bought some outlandish objects for them on a whim. She couldn't help it though, it was difficult to sleep with so many people in her bed; that or they really were attempting to seduce her every other night . . . And when she saw them for sale, even if they were ridiculously expensive and the purchase halved her money, she couldn't help but buy them. The strangely designed furniture just screamed 'Familiars' to her. And so, whatever they really were, they were now serving as her Familiars' beds.

That wasn't to say that things suddenly became simple. Far to the contrary, in fact. Her Familiars set up the couches in her room, like she expected they would. She hadn't expected them to push the couches to either side of her bed—facing the bed. So they still shared a bed, in a sense; the bed was simply larger, and the only way in or out was to climb to the end. Which was a task made difficult by her Familiars, as they insisted on taking both the couches and large portions of the mattress. Louise found it difficult to rest when she knew that she'd have such a difficult time getting out of bed without stepping on one of them. Not every night, though. Frequently, one of them would steal her bed and force her on a couch for the night. It was so frustrating! And with the seduction hallucinations, and the hallucination from the other day, and the feelings that her Familiars were chatting it up any time they were withing one hundred feet of another, Louise felt that she was going certifiably insane! She needed to relax. Thus, shopping!

It was now several days later, and she was off to Tristain's market, this time with C.C. in tow. They were on a mission to buy a wardrobe for her Familiars, and now that it was the Day of the Void, they had the time it would take to find something fashionable. Both of her Familiars had wanted to come desperately—they both seemed to have some penchant for fashion, but apparently C.C. was evening a score of some sort with L.L., so he was left behind to sulk. Louise had sent a letter home stating that she was in dire need of some clothing that matched her Familiars' dimensions, but the return letter had stated that it would take something like two weeks to make and tailor both of their wardrobes. That was far more time than she was willing to wait when Tristain was a three hour ride away, and now she could go clothes shopping, something she hadn't properly done in far too long.

The two of them had only just now arrived in the upper class district, they'd had to travel through several blocks of filthy taverns and dangerous-looking shops, and now they had to decide which shop to enter first. There was a men's shop, which they would likely visit last, but the true dilemma was which of two boutiques she would enter first. She turned to consult C.C. on her opinion of the matter, only to notice the enigmatic woman was gone. When Louise cast about, she caught sight of a few tufts of green flitting through the crowd; tufts of green entering the shop that she had just decided she didn't want to patronize. But Louise did not want to make a habit of abandoning her Familiars, or getting taken advantage of whilst alone in the streets, so she huffed over to the shop, which sported a dull sign that in fading lettering announced 'Hetaera's Personal Design'. Then she huffed around the racks of fabrics until she huffed over to her Familiar, who was comparing fabrics and colours as if nothing had happened. How could she do that? Didn't she know that Louise didn't want to come to this particular store? "You know, Louise, you're adorable when you're all huffy." That stopped her midair. The finger she'd just raised in preparation for scolding was quickly balled into a fist that she almost swallowed. "You're cuter still when you're embarrassed," C.C. added. A mirror on the nearby wall confirmed to her that she was now redder than a tomato. She didn't know if she wanted to yell or cry, the situation was just so shocking.

Her inner turmoil was summarily stopped as C.C., with a flippant 'Carry this,' forced her to carry several bolts of silk and cotton before jaunting off to an adjoining rack to continue her quest for . . . whatever her quest was. Louise didn't actually know what C.C. had in mind, though by the look of her newly acquired load, she was planning on motley or some other equally garish motif. Louise decided to take a seat on a nearby bench and mull over what could possibly ever be created from the mass of cloth in her lap as she waited for C.C. to finish her search. Actually, the pile in her lap had been steadily growing, to the point where she could no longer see over it, along with a much more modest stack of fabrics on the bench next to her. Coming to no conclusion, she opted to wait patiently and ask C.C. when she finished, which might take some time.

When finally C.C. was done, Louise was thoroughly ensconced in a mass of fabrics and laces to all sides, which took several minutes of effort to squeeze herself out of. It took them several trips to the counter, where a slightly bewildered clerk was waiting, before they ferried all of the necessary materials and C.C. began to speak to the lead seamstress about design—something Louise ignored. She was determined to not be a housewife, she need not know the ins-and-outs of fashion. In the end, it appeared that their order would be completed within three days, and that they'd have to send to have them picked up if they didn't want to ride back to Tristain personally. This was the main reason Louise hadn't wanted to choose this shop, the other shop right across the street had an enormous selection of pre-made dresses that need only be tailored to size! But what's done was done, and Louise had made a conscious decision to avoid arguing with her Familiars, as it was futile to even attempt. They had a much better grasp of . . . everything, it seemed. She decided that it was best to not dwell too much on her Familiars' disturbing knack for being disturbing on the ride back to the Academy.

* * *

Lelouch spent some few seconds standing idly by the stable after Master & Co. left, worrying up a conclusion as to what he wanted to do with his spare time. C.C.'d forced him to stay behind with a rather severe mental shove and the demand that he suffer for the crime of 'identity theft.' He'd thought it was utterly hilarious when he told her that he was going to choose L.L. as his alias, but she'd been bickering at him about it since and he'd come to rue his choice. As of now, he was off to speak to the staff, if only he could shake off one Jean Colbert. The man stuck to him like a leech the moment he was alone and had begun a scientific equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition.

"Yes Jean, for the last time, the Runes are on our left hands," he sighed. This was becoming slightly bothersome. They were thankful to the man for showing them a diagram of the school and explaining some of the fundamentals of Academy to them, he'd even been kind enough to hold back what he thought were their names from Louise as they requested. But gratitude could only extend so far, and his constant pestering was becoming a regular source of irritation.

"But how can that be? I can't confirm that through any means, magical or not." He was quiet for a welcomed brief period of thought, but alas, it was not to last. "How do you know? Can you see them? Have you seen them?"

"No Jean, neither of us have seen them. We know, just drop it would you?" Lelouch was grateful to the man, and he did like him, but now was not the time, and Jean had been asking the same questions for days on end. He wasn't above manipulating the man, if he could have a moment of peace. "Jean, there are matters of grave importance that I must attend to. Would you like help me measure the bust size of every woman in the school?"

That shut the man up. Perhaps he'd won the bet? "I—uh—um . . . uh . . ." well, step one complete, reduce Jean to a blubbering wreck. "N-n-no thank you! That would . . . would be v-very interesting, b-but I've just remembered that I have a class to teach!" Step two, failed. The bumbling Professor had decided to hobble away, down a hall that would lead to his oft-neglected class. He seemed to be a little stiff, and his movements were quite . . . jerky. And he seemed to be mumbling about something 'soft' and that 'Miss Longueville' he was always going off about. The man seemed to have developed quite the crush on his co-worker, he'd started today's questioning by excitedly mentioning that he'd managed to ask the woman to an upcoming ball. That thought was only transient though, as Lelouch's mind was swiftly overtaken by the hilarity of what he'd just witnessed. He definitely had to share this memory with C.C.

Lelouch soon turned his mind back to why he spooked off the nutty professor, so he sifted through his memories of the map Jean had shown him and located the quickest route from his current location, a hall not far from the stables, to the Academy's kitchen. He had a small favour to ask of the head chef, a portly man who went by the name Marteau. They'd met after he and C.C. finished their first chat with Jean, and they had easily won the man over with a small speech on the inherent tragedy of being born a commoner. Almost immediately after laying eyes on the man, he and C.C. had known that whilst he appeared to be the epitome of subservience, given just the slightest impetus he would transform into a jovial and boisterous man who was loyal to his ideals and his friends. So they'd recited a couple lines from Thomas Paine, and poof, suddenly they were his idealistic friends. Not that they mentioned that Thomas Paine was sent to the gallows for his radical ideologies, but they didn't need Marteau to understand Britannian History; they only needed his loyalty.

So when Lelouch waltzed into Marteau's kitchen, he gladly gave his idealistic friend a shot at cooking a foreign dish called pizza. Skepticism was clearly etched into the tubby chef's face when he asked, but Marteau was a loyal man, so he took Lelouch's word that this was an excellent dish to add to his repertoire. After all, Lelouch had said that this new dish, 'pizza,' was the food of kings, something only the wealthiest enjoyed in his home country.

Lelouch followed the recipe from Pizza Hut—one he'd stolen through a careful night of database hacking so long ago—as best he could with the rudimentary ingredients available, and it developed quite the crowd. Marteau had apparently found one of the literate staff members, a vaguely oriental girl who went by Siesta, to write down the instructions for this new dish, and this created a buzz of interest that derailed the rest of the kitchen staff from doing their jobs.

When he finished, Lelouch judged his work to be satisfactory, so he let the interested staff try this exotic new dish. They tore through it, all the while gushing praise, and he couldn't help but role his eyes. It was his Witch that preferred the cheap, if adequate pizza of Pizza Hut. Lelouch would much rather spend his time eating homemade gourmet pizzas with top quality ingredients, things with complex recipes and opulent aromas; the kind he once had the palace kitchen make when he was Emperor. But that was then, and this was now. He'd made sure to make an extra pizza, and was planning on bringing it to C.C. as a means of apology. Which he'd be doing right about . . . now. If his senses weren't deceiving him, she'd just entered the school grounds.

* * *

Louise found the ride back to be much more tedious than anticipated, perhaps she dreaded the school for because it intrinsically represented all of her failures to her. Which made her relief at making it back all the more confusing. Not that she'd dawdled about with such troubling thoughts, as the ride itself had been rather mindless. Her Familiars still tended to make poor companions, regardless of circumstance.

When finally they made it out of the stables and were making their way to the Dining Hall for lunch, they noticed L.L. at a distance. He seemed to be holding up a round tray with something peculiar on it. At least it was nothing that Louise recognized, especially from so long a distance. Though it appeared that he was sporting a decidedly uncharacteristic grin as began a slow march to meet them in the field. When she asked C.C., the green-haired woman looked to be in a slight daze, as if she was recovering from shock. Perhaps it was whatever was on the tray? It looked like some type of failed experiment, whatever it was. Louise was curious to find out, so she tugged lightly on C.C.'s hand to get her moving and started on her way to discover what was so fascinating.

It was that hand that saved her, as moments later, an enormous earthen golem stepped over the school's outer wall; it stepped right where Louise had been standing but a split second ago. The thing was enormous, towering dozens of feet above her head. The knock-back form its earth-shattering steps unceremoniously pushed her to the ground, but she was simply relieved to be alive, she would have died if C.C. hadn't pulled her back in time. She would have died . . . But she didn't, so it was okay, right? No big worry, she made it. L.L. did too, though she found it hard to tell, he was still a ways away. And now it was raging against the central spire of the school, something that Louise knew wasn't supposed to happen. Something Louise knew she could do something about!

She summarily pulled C.C. with her as she ran for the magical construct pounding on her school. Louise knew she could do this, she had to. There was no choice, they were being attacked by some unknown Mage for no discernible reason! What to do? What to do? She knew she'd successfully cast two spells properly just the other week, surely this meant that there was a chance that she could now. But which spell? That looked like an exceedingly powerful golem. Did she have any spells that would do anything to even scathe such powerful magic? She had . . . Fireball, that was a powerful spell. But this was an Earth construct, a Fireball would be unlikely to harm it. Then . . . Wind? Did she know any wind projectiles? No! No! Fireball! It would have to be Fireball! It was the only offensive spell she knew the chant to.

Louise began the long incantation required to channel her willpower and focus it to cast Fireball, "In, Ex, Bet, Fla-ahh—" when she was suddenly thrown down by C.C. "What was that for! C.C.! We must do something! Why did you do that?! I have to prove myself!" Now was not the time to interrupt her! Why had she done it? Did her own Familiar have so little faith in her abilities? How dare she! She was wroth! She was irate! She was—

"Behold, death looms near you," C.C. intoned in one of the most chillingly inhuman tones as she gestured ever so slightly with her eyes. "Always."

When Louise followed those shining amber eyes, she was petrified. "Twice . . ." she let out an audible gasp. She had almost died twice. In less than five minutes, she'd nearly died horribly twice. Twice. And twice she'd been saved by C.C. But Louise understood that glance, that tone. Twice. But she would not be thrice lucky in one day. Thrice would cost her her life. Louise, dead at the too-young age of sixteen. She would have to pay attention. She needed to learn the meaning of calm, to never let twice become thrice, for even once was once too many when dealing with death. That golem had given her her twice, but she only had to give it its once. Those eyes reflected a mound of dirt and rubble that would have been her burial mound if she'd stayed put.

On further examination, Louise found that there were mounds of dirt everywhere around her. She was in an upturned and devastated field, but all she saw was a field of graves; a field of places where she could have died. And the source was the golem. It seemed to be going into a frenzy, kicking the ground and raging with impunity, but for the wall. That must have been it's target, yet it remained untouched, pristine even. A high level reinforcement spell, then. And now that the golem had failed, it was venting it's frustration on the yard. Or, more precisely, the Mage that Louise had thus-far not detected sitting atop the golem's head was the root of the rage. If she could placate the Mage, she could placate the unwieldy and far more dangerous construct. But only after she secured her other Familiar. He was halfway buried under one of the piles of rubble, far across the field, very near the epicenter. But he was between them and the golem, so it would be fine. It would have to be fine, she could not let thrice happen to her Familiar. "Come, C.C., lend me a hand. We have to help L.L.!" And then they were off, though C.C. seemed less than enthusiastic about helping L.L.—something that Louise couldn't understand. Weren't they fellows? Nevertheless, Louise was the Master in this situation, and that meant that L.L. ultimately was her responsibility.

Making haste between so much rubble strewn about so haphazardly was difficult, and progress was slow. And it just became more arduous as they neared him, for even as they were closing in, the golem and its master continued to exacerbate the situation. Run left, dodge; run forward, dive; crawl, roll to the left. Louise was filthy. Louise was tired. But she did not give up, she made it to her Familiar, and C.C. soon followed her. "L.L.! Are you alright? Are you alive?!" There were tears in her eyes, but she held them back and kept cool. His pulse was weak. Far too weak, but Louise was not a doctor, and so she took heart in the fact that she didn't know if it was truly too weak. "Please, L.L. Don't die on me!" she yelled. And that was her mistake.

Louise heard the golem calm ever-so-slightly. And then it began to come for her. It seemed that that scream had been her thrice. She bent over, mere inches from L.L., and stared at him as she awaited her third and final failure for the day. There was a stomp, and another, and then another still. And then a shadow descended, and then a foot. There was a crack. A sickening squish. And there was blood dribbling, pooled, touching her.

Thrice. It had been a third time. But not her third time. No, it was L.L.'s thrice. It was his blood that was soaking into to earth. His lifeblood that stained her shoes. Where once her violet eyed Familiar had been, there was now a stone foot. She could no longer hold back the tears, and so she cried. She sobbed. She wailed and sniveled and whined, just like a toddler that'd just lost their favorite toy. And then, just like a toddler, she was embraced from behind. She was whispered condolences and reassured that all would be right by tomorrow. These reassurances brought a small measure of relief to her, and so she opened her eyes to thank her comforter for sharing her thrice with her. And she was no longer in the field.

Louise was in the embrace of the mysterious dark witch that she'd met in her fever dream. She was in the same land that screamed other and had no permanent features. How ironic, she thought, to be in the arms of evil as death loomed over her. And again, just like the first time, the witch spoke. But this time, it was but a soothing whisper, and Louise could not tell if the sound came from elsewhere or the Witch's lips anymore. "My dear child. You appear to be in dire need, yet again on the precipice of death. I cannot offer you what you desire, as my Demon is not here with me," she paused and turned Louise around in her arms, to look her in the eye. The eyes. They were the same eyes that had shown her a third chance not two minutes ago. They were golden eyes that reflected, but what Louise saw was not a reflection of her own eyes, as she had thought she would, but a reflection of a dirty little girl being overshadowed by the shadow of a colossus, a golem.

She saw those eyes, and she could not help but feel that if her Familiar was such a dark entity, then it must be a reflection of herself. "I can offer you a contract. I can give you the power to do what must be done. I can give you what you need, if you so wish it. All that I require is that when the time comes, you grant my deepest wish. Would you accept such a contract?" And Louise did. She nodded her acceptance and offered the Witch some small smile, and act to convey her apologies for her previous disregard for one of the two people that reflected her true nature. "Then you accept," and then . . . everything. Louise saw her life flash before her eyes, she saw her Familiars' lives flash before her eyes. She saw everything that ever was, is, or will be in the blink of an eye. And in another blink of an eye she saw all that wasn't, all that wouldn't be, all that couldn't be. And then she was it. The bird, the glowing crest across the Witch's forehead. And when she blinked again, the crest was gone from her forehead, but Louise saw it still. She saw it in her eye now, reflected off of her Familiar's own eyes. "The power of kings will make you lonely indeed." And then it was gone, and Louise was just a crying little girl again. But she knew what to do.

"You, girl. And your green-haired friend there. You must know me, I am Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt. Renowned across all of Tristain for my brazen thefts!" The figure on the golem was yelling down at them. "I must steal from this vault! It is to be my greatest heist yet! And you, you shall be my hostages! Do you understand girl?!" The cloaked thief leaned down, almost as if to extend its ears to the mumbling little girl. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."

"I said, you killed my Familiar," was her nearly inaudible reply.

"Ah! You mean the dark haired boy? Then that must make you . . . ah, Louise Vallière, if I'm not mistaken! Wonderful! I can't imagine a better hostage!"

". . . And who are you to know me?" she asked, her gaze focused on where L.L. had been.

"Oh! Silly me! How could I ever be so thick! It's to be expected that you don't know me in a cloak!" And then Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt removed her disguise. "You must know me as Miss Secretary Longueville, am I correct? Please forgive me, I shouldn't have expected you to know me with this thing on." She removed her cloak, and that was the worst mistake of her life.

"I will _**not forgive you!**_" And when Louise looked up, a bright red bird flew from her left eye.

It took less time than could humanly be measured, and Fouquet was no more. "No! Please?! No! I'm so sorry! Forgive me! I beg of you . . . I had to do it! They made me . . " She slumped on her construct, which itself crumbled to dust. She fell to the ground an inconsolable wreck, and there she began to cry many magnitudes more than Louise had been but a minute ago. She began to cry, and she did not stop.

Louise walked to the sobbing thief, grabbed her by the chin, looked into her eyes, and slowly whispered, "Never."

Then she walked to C.C., who was still sitting where she had been when she comforted her. And then she collapsed.

A small shadow flew far across the field.

* * *

Colbert was more than curious, he was angry. Angry at himself, angry at the school, simply angry in general. No one, it seemed, had noticed a rampaging golem on the grounds until it was gone, or if they had, they hadn't thought to do anything about it. They let his student, a gentle girl of sixteen years, take care of it! But, most of all, Colbert was angry at what had once been Miss Longueville.

When he'd lead a large portion of the teaching staff to investigate what had once been a manicured lawn, they'd discovered some small hell. It was a maelstrom, it was chaos. The school had been attacked from the inside. It took them nearly half an hour to find Miss Vallière collapsed in the arms of her Familiars. They made an odd sight, Colbert had never before realized how similar they all looked; almost as if they were printed from the same mold. And next to the three familiar faces had been a far more familiar face. It was Miss Longueville, and she was crying.

At first, he'd attempted to sympathize with her, to understand what she'd done and why she'd done it, but he discovered that there was little pity to be given when L.L. quietly walked over to him and explained the situation. Miss Longueville was, in fact, one Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt; an infamous thief known for his, or now he should say her, audacity and recklessness. That was what the commoners called her: Fouquet, Bane of Bystanders. A well-earned name, as indicated by today's scene, Colbert reflected. Though it appeared to be a moot point, as the thief seemed to now be incapable of anything beyond crying and apologizing. And crying and apologizing. She wanted to be forgiven for something, but Colbert was in no mood to find out. "Will someone take her to a holding cell? I must see to my students." Someone from the crowd, Professor Chevreuse, cast Levitation on the wailing criminal and began escorting her to the main building she'd just been attacking. The cells were somewhere below ground, so she'd not be flying out anytime soon—especially without her wand. She'd be shipped to the prison in Tristain to await trial, and then surely death. A disgraced former noble such as her would have no protection from the court's arbitration.

Miss Vallière was fine, as far as the Water Mages could tell, but the ordeal had exhausted her and she was suffering from mild shock. Her Familiars were shining examples of health when they were given the same check-up, an oddity for certain, but not one that Colbert was wont to think on. He was far too preoccupied with worrying over his student. And then a messenger had come to him in the medical ward, ordering that he help the other teachers perform a role call. He would rather not, but the messenger insisted, and his presence would not benefit his unconscious student, so he left with the anxious maid. The crisis was over, it was time to head back to work.

* * *

They'd moved their Little Master to her bed after getting the go-ahead from the nurse, a triangle class Water Mage. She'd been out for nearly two days since she'd dealt with their errant thief. Not that they'd stayed by her bed the whole time. Her new Geass Bearer was better than that, she didn't need coddling. They'd instead made the best of their two days; C.C. hadn't had pizza in so long, and now the kitchen was more than glad to pump it out at all hours as it was apparently a hit amongst the students. She decided that she needed to teach them about pizza boxes though—it just wasn't the same when you couldn't make a mess.

Lelouch had dealt her a low blow, but she couldn't hold it against him. She couldn't stay upset at the man, he'd finally solved the pizza shortage, and in so doing removed the only major flaw this world had so far. Besides his name, that was. But she'd just forgiven him for that, after all . . . pizza. That was not to say that Lelouch shared a mind with her, well that metaphor was inherently flawed; he did share a mind with her, after all, but he was of a different opinion. The pansy had lived in an age of air conditioning, and he just kept complaining to her about how 'unbearably hot' it was. She did her best to ignore him when he got like that, it didn't bother her anyways.

But now wasn't the time for pizza or air conditioning. They'd come to be at their Master's side when she wakened, which would be within the minute. They'd both done extensive study on the human body, amongst many other things. Studying memories and texts was most of what could be done in the World of C. They weren't dead, so they couldn't actually join the collective unconscious, they could simply skim the surface. So whilst they'd never been trained as such, they likely understood the human body in ways that the people of this world would take ten thousand years to discover. Not that they could apply most of it; there were no cybernetics to implant, they lacked the tools necessary to modify a body in any but the crudest of ways. But their knowledge wasn't limited to surgery—in this case, it was simply knowing how long Louise would be under. And there, she'd finally woken up.

Louise opened her eyes from a state of unconscious to the sight of her room for the second time that month. Things were different this time, though. Her Familiars were situated on the couches, watching her. She wondered how long they'd been there. She couldn't see over the couches, so she didn't know if they were alone. "How—how long was I out?" Her voice was coarse, thick. She needed a bath terribly. She hurt everywhere, even in places she couldn't identify.

"Two days, this time," L.L. answered her. L.L. . . . L.L. . . .

"L.L.!" she nearly hopped on the man, before grabbing him in a tight, reaffirming hug. "You're okay! But I watched you die!" And yet . . . if he'd died, their contract would be void. And it wasn't, she could still feel the familiar bond between them. But that didn't matter. He was alive, that was what mattered.

"Yes, Louise. I am quite alright," he cooed as he gently embraced her. "I'm made of tougher stuff than you give me credit for," he teased.

"Y-you idiot," she mumbled. "I was worried . . . But Demons never die," she huffed out as she sat back on her own mattress. She wasn't sure, but she thought she heard him utter something like 'How . . . fitting.' The bastard. She did her best to calm her features as she thought of what to ask. She'd been out for two days, surely she'd missed something. "The thief?" she began.

"Imprisoned, being questioned, pending trial," C.C. told her.

Louise nodded. That was good, she didn't want to see that woman as anything but dead. Imagined or not, the woman had killed her Familiar, and for that she would see her hang. And being questioned was just a bonus. It went unsaid that being questioned was considered far worse than the gallows. A nice thought, certainly, but that woman was only there because she'd turned into a blubbering mass of self-loathing.

"What . . . what was that?" How had she done that? One minute she'd been a bleary-eyed child, and in the next she'd felt a surge of power deep in her mind. The unerring desire to show the woman just how terribly she'd wronged her had swelled until she felt that she must burst. The next moment, her wish had come true.

"Geass," they responded in sync. "A manifestation of the the Power of Kings."

So that's what this strange power was. She'd exercised her will on someone of greater power than her for the first time in her life—it was thrilling. "And this power, my Geass, how does it work?"

"We don't know, Louise. Each is unique," L.L. began. "However, your Geass is the Geass of Absolution. It can be a powerful tool, make of it what you would."

"But what about you?! I saw it! The selfsame bird that flew from my eye marred your forehead, C.C.! And you, Demon surely you too would have the same symbol somewhere if you'd been there," she demanded. "You have this same power. What are your Geasses?" That appeared to startle them ever-so-slightly, and they seemed to begin one of those voiceless conversations again. Only, this time, Louise could almost swear that she heard something akin to incoherent conversation flitting at the edge of her senses. Whatever it was, it was quickly gone—something Louise was thankful for, as the sound had been unnerving.

"No," C.C. answered, "I am without the Power of Kings."

Well that was disappointing, but Louise was not to be deterred. She turned about to look at L.L., who had remained silent. "And you?"

He closed his eyes and let out what she took for an exasperated sigh before shaking his head. "I have none, Louise. I am sorry, but your abilities must be discovered on your own."

That deflated her, if just a tad, but all was not lost. She had a new power, hopefully it was reliable. It would be terrible if she attempted to cast her Geass only for her eye to explode. That was a terrifying thought. "This won't kill me, will it?" There was more than a slight edge in her voice.

"It is not a spell, it will not fail you. Therein lies its danger," was C.C.'s cryptic response. Well, no matter. So long as she couldn't kill herself with it, all would be well. Sated with this new influx of knowledge, Louise decided that she would rather not push her chances any further. It was amazing that her Familiars had revealed as much as they had, considering the difficulty she usually had to go through whenever she tried to ask them something. She was dirty, anyways, so it was best if she went to take care of her body. Her stomach then proceeded to audibly remind the room that she hadn't eaten in two days. She'd have to eat as well, it seemed.

As she was leaving the room, L.L. gave her a casual farewell before remarking to her, "Oh, Louise, you should try the pizza!" Whatever, Louise would eat anything at the moment, but that would have to wait. A proper Lady does not show herself in public in such a state of disarray as she was, after all. Oh, the humanity.

* * *

The next day had come, and with it had come a surprise. In all of the commotion surrounded Fouquet's failed robbing of the school's vault, Louise had completely forgotten about the clothes she'd ordered for her Familiars. So when a maid who introduced herself as Siesta interrupted her during lunch to ask where she would like the outfits, Louise could only stare dumbly back at her. She finally did remember, with some help from L.L., who gestured to what he was wearing—yet another stolen third-year uniform. The first had been more red than purple after getting stepped on and was replaced long before she'd awakened.

"Ah, they should be taken to my quarters and placed on one of the couches," she told the servant girl.

"Yes, Miss Vallière," she replied before walking off, no doubt to do her job.

Their meal was quickly finished, and so they departed for Louise's chambers. She'd prefer that they change before afternoon classes began. On the way, Louise met Kirche, who decided to join them to see what she'd chosen to clothe her Familiars with. From the way she stated it, she seemed to believe that she'd ordered some uniform designed for them, which was not the case. But Louise had become accustomed to Kirche's frank way of speech, if only slightly, so she wasn't nearly as bothered by it as she should have been. Kirche'd started bothering Louise to share meals with her and even offered to find someone to share her bed with. Did she think they were becoming friends? Were they? She hoped not, that would complicate matters with the family. Not to brag, but Louise had actually momentarily left Kirche speechless when she'd rebutted her proposal by reminding her that she already shared her bed with two people. That moment had been one of her crowning achievements!

Louise stirred out of her musings when she opened the door to her chamber, quickly reminding Kirche to 'Don't burn anything.' Laid out before them on the couch nearest the door were two piles of outfits, separated by to whom they belonged. The pile on the right was taken by L.L., who went behind the far couch and used it as an impromptu privacy screen. When he'd changed into one of the outfits, he stood up and came about with the rest of the outfits bundled under his arm. He'd chosen a tight fitting navy button-up shirt with long sleeves. The cuffs and collar were adorned with thin purple lace and the small buttons were made of mother-of-pearl. He wore a plain leather belt with an golden buckle to hold up his rather unremarkable black pants. The belt was plain but for being embossed with 'entre chien et loup'. It was a mystery to Louise as to what dusk had to do with anything though, so he left it be.

C.C. went after he finished, taking with her the pile that had been on the left. She wasn't anywhere near as concerned about making a mess as her partner, as she threw whatever she didn't feel like wearing across the room. L.L. was left running about the room, back and forth to catch the raining dresses. By the time she was finished, L.L. was severely winded for some odd reason, like he'd done something more than run about a room for a couple minutes. She emerged wearing a long grey dress that reached past mid-shin. The short sleeved bodice was tightly laced and had a not-quite-modest cut to it, and the skirt was heavily pleated with a darker grey petticoat peeking out from the bottom. The dressed frilled about at her neckline, slightly hiding the depth to which it plunged, and sported some rather intricate embroidered bare tree branches. All accounted for, they were both rather impressive and mysterious, if but for the fact that they were both still wearing the shoes they'd stolen!

"Well then," Kirche remarked, "Dashing! Let's go show the world!" She seemed genuine, but this was Kirche, who would rather that her Familiars show her the world. Or not, perhaps Louise was being paranoid. She'd found that she was slightly more tense since 'the incident', as everyone around her called it. As if they were saving her pain by calling it something else. It was rather annoying, Louise was not that weak!

"So, C.C., what was all that cloth you dumped on me for? I couldn't figure out any rhyme or reason to any of it." Louise was curious, she couldn't see any correlation between what her Familiars were wearing and what C.C.'d had her carry.

"Oh . . . None at all! They kept you occupied whilst I shopped!" she said with sugary tones layered upon one another. They did, did they?! Well she'd had about enough of that! Louise let out a frustrated growl, kicked the door open, and stomped about on her way to class. No need to wait for her useless Familiars!

"She's so cute when she yells like that!" Kirche giggled.

* * *

Picture, if you would, Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt. She was in quite the predicament. She was transferred to a small cell in the crowded Tristain prison. The larger cells, though empty, were only for the imprisoned nobility. She was lucky to be alone, as most cells, though larger than this one, contained at least eight men. Even prisons have standards, and they wanted her to be presentable when she was questioned. Not that she cared. She was sorry for everything she'd ever done and everything she'd never done. She was sorry and she knew she was guilty of every wrong known to man. She was sorry about anything, she didn't even know or care why she was sorry. There was just a point in her life where she suddenly felt shamed.

So she huddled in the dark and cried her tears out as fast as she made them. Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt reduced to tears, Fouquet the Crumbling Resolve they should call her. Fouquet wasn't even her real name, and she felt shame about that too. And cried for another hour. And another. And another.

And another.

And once more.

And she cried so much, she didn't even notice that someone had entered her cell.

So she cried about that, because she was sorry that she hadn't noticed.

"'My, Mathilda, how spectacular 'twas your failure. How spectacular 'twas your fall.' That is what they sing, Miss Mathilda." The shadowy man said evenly. "It's become a popular song at the bars, it's likely to be sung by children for years." He bent down to look into her bleary eyes. "You know what this means, of course. You fail us, you fail your friend. That was the deal, poor Mathilda." He kicked her, sending her splayed across the floor. "Now come, we still have use for you."

She followed the shadowy man.

After all, she had failed her friend, and she was sorry for that.

But Fouquet was sorry about everything, and she'd be sorry if she couldn't help this shadowy man.

"I'm sorry, Tiffania," she whispered during a brief burst of sanity—because that was the only reason she should be sorry.

* * *

Tiffania Westwood shot out of her bed in the middle of the night, her ears quaking with premonition for the third night in a row. She'd just had the most terrifying nightmare about her friend Mathilda. Not that that was uncommon; Mathilda had simply vanished one day a couple years ago. At first, it hadn't been so worrisome, they'd been low on supplies, so she'd gone out for groceries. But then she'd been gone for far too long, and Tiffania had given up. Now she sneaked into town, covered head to toe to hide her elven features, and bought what the orphanage needed. That was rare though, money. So she was often reduced to sneaking in and stealing what she could before coming back. When the children asked were she'd been, she'd say that she had a secret farm somewhere deep in the woods. That had been a tad troublesome at times, as the more adventurous of the orphans occasionally attempted to run into the forest in search of her secret farm.

With such thoughts, Tiffania found that returning to sleep eluded her, so she decided that she'd go collect some supplies in Saxe-Gotha. She'd found that stealing came naturally to her, and even if she abhorred it, it was a necessary evil if she wished to keep the children fed and clothed. The town was something of a long walk, nearly an hour, but it had to be. If she lived any closer, the townsfolk were likely to stumble in and find her. And then all of the 'elf-loving' children would be forced to live on the streets.

One of the children, the oldest boy, named Timmy was awake when she was about to go. He was a good kid, and although she avoided favourites, he was her favourite. A bookish boy of eight, he'd figured out where she actually went at night one day. But he hadn't spread the news to the other children like most eight-year-olds would, he'd confronted her about it one night. She'd explained the need, and he'd accepted it. He wasn't a very optimistic child, his parents had been killed by bandits when he was four and it was his first memory. Such a terrible first memory, but it made him more cool-headed than the other children, it made him thankful. "Keep an eye on the younger children while I'm out, Tim," she whispered before closing the door. He understood, he was the most responsible one there. His craving for responsibility was one of the few childish traits he still retained.

When finally she made it, she went to work. There was no use poking around, theft was serious business. She tried to be as humane as possible though. After all, people's livelihoods depended upon these stalls, and she didn't want to make any more orphans than there already were. So she stole equally; an apple here, a potato there. One of the children needed a scarf. The shops were locked, of course, but unlocking was a simple cantrip that even first-year students learned. Not that she'd ever been to school, but Mathilda had taught it to her. When Tiffania was certain that she had everything they would need until she had enough money to buy supplies, she began her dutiful march back to the orphanage.

On her way there, she couldn't help the odd feeling that something was off. Her elven ears kept picking up sounds that she knew didn't belong to the forest, sounds she couldn't recognize. She decided that she was hearing things again because of paranoia and guilt. It wasn't uncommon for her to think she was about to be caught at the oddest of times, like during bathing or dinner. Caught within her thoughts, the trip home felt much shorter than she knew it was.

When she entered the compound, all was quiet. Good, that meant that Tim had done his job well; she'd have to reward him for being helpful. She knew he wanted a bow, maybe she'd make him one. When she opened the door to tell him about her plan though, she was lost. Utterly lost. There the children were, in there beds like good little boys and girls, sleeping soundly, dreaming the dreams of children. Only they weren't. They all had terrible gaping red grimaces across their little throats. All of them. Even Timmy. Poor little Timothy.

Tiffania jerked back, one step then two. She couldn't cry, she couldn't yell. She was incapable of anything except terror. Abject terror.

There was a dark laugh behind her, and she turned to silently gape at a shadowy man. "Don't worry, Miss Westwood, things will be over quickly. This is nothing personal, simply business. Your friend failed us, your friend failed you. Good evening, Miss."

And then there was a knife, and Tiffania Westwood was dead.

"Don't worry about tears, Mathilda will cry for both of you."

ODD#I(e)/5,iii;72Cfn3178

AN:

The phrase 'entre chien et loup' is a metaphor that means 'at dusk,' to any of you that were confused. Not that it matters to the story really, it was just a detail that I put in as a small nod to the fact that they're actually speaking some vaguely French language.

To any reader that found, as one reviewer said, that anything was confusing, I apologize. Some of the story is deliberately vague, most of that will be addressed at some point—except the innuendos, if those need explanation, you're likely too young. Other problems may include grammar, typos, syntax, or descriptions, etc. I do what I can to fix any of these things as best I can, sorry if they bother you. Don't be afraid to point out any glaring issues. I'm not likely to notice on my own, seeing as those issues made it through several proofreads.


	3. Revenge is a Vulture

**Everything I Touch**

_Chapter 3_

_Revenge is a Vulture_

"They killed her?! By all that is Holy—what did we hire you for?!" she screamed at the messenger. Or shrieked, that was a more accurate description for what she did, if one neglected to mention the way she tossed her empty goblet at the man. If one remembered all the details, then he could say that she became a font of anger that lit the room, and that the goblet had glowed with magic as it left her hand, only to bounce off of the messenger with but a scratch. She signaled for the guard to take the news-bearer from the room. She hadn't meant to activate her runes, but it seems that she'd failed to do so in her rage. Tragic, really. He'd been a good messenger, if she didn't know his name then she'd known his face. But that particular cup was linked to the last continental war, centuries ago, and though it's design would fit in with any of the other gaudy trinkets that nobles prided themselves on, the designer had had more sinister ambitions, for the cup poisoned with but a nick; the messenger would be lucky to make it through the next hour. Dangerous to hold? Yes. But it was a damn good cup, so she picked it back up and waved for more wine.

"I personally told him that she was important on multiple occasions! Is he daft?" she muttered to herself, berating herself for taking a step away from the man. That damn Cromwell was overconfident, he was becoming drunk with power—power he seemed to have forgotten was not truly his. Certainly he must be mad! She'd made proper mention that the girl was under her protection, but his view of himself had obviously become distorted. The figurehead didn't see his position for what it was anymore, it seemed. But how to remind him? He was meeting expectations on all other fronts, it would be far too much trouble to replace him for such a thing when the public didn't know about it. An unfortunate accident then? She'd have to consult her master's opinion on the matter before making any concrete decisions.

She heard, as if on cue, her master step quietly into the room. He stood in the shadows; looming, brooding. A tuft of his indigo hair strayed into the light, but that was all that could be discerned of his features. Not that she minded; she'd long ago memorized his every feature . . . "What's this I hear about Cromwell?" he questioned evenly. She could not see her master, but the disgruntlement in his voice was evident. It was the slightest of tonal shifts, something she was certain that no one else would notice, could notice. Not even he could.

"He's killed off Albion's Void Mage, the half-elf girl, along with the children she'd been caring for. Left them to rot were they fell," she reported casually. As casually as she could without invoking her master's ire, something he claimed to be of incapable of. "What should we do? He's been toting that Fouquet with him everywhere he walks, if the reports are to be believed." If. They had an information network as all intelligent people with power should. But intelligent people also doubted their sources; the informants were desperate to report anything that could possibly catch their interest, as well as many things that didn't, leaving 'truth' that must be cross-referenced with 'truth' if one wanted to know the truth. But there were multiple reports from several of her more reliable informants, so it was best to move on as if 'truth' were truth and make contingency plans that accounted for misinformation.

"If? How certain are you of his incompetence?" Her master knew well the troubles of verifying the truth—it was once his network, after all. He'd simply delegated the task to her when he learned of her capability. Or so she hoped; he could have simply grown weary of the trouble and dumped it on his second-in-command.

"More than enough; I believe the fool's done it. Shall I call for his head? Or perhaps a less obvious method?" she posited with a glance at her master, who stared back at her from the shadows. His shady outline appeared to be contemplating, but he could have just as easily been daydreaming. His thought process was often difficult to follow, so he could well be doing both.

After some handful of minutes, his figure relaxed the tiniest fraction. "No, forgive him. He knows not what he does, and his actions, though misguided, stem from good intentions," he finally eked out. Her master must have come to such a decision with much difficulty, or perhaps not—his formal phrasing could be rooted in boredom as easily as conflict. But she was conflicted, even if he might not have been.

"Pardon," she began, "but since when have our intentions been good?" Because, really, they were inciting rebellion. Nothing but civil war would come of their actions, nothing else had. Cromwell's little coup d'état brought no prosperity to Albion, and though he was an effective speaker, he didn't truly have any of the skills required to manage a nation. From the beginning they'd set him up for failure.

"They are not," he spoke with conviction, of a sort. "But that is what will make it interesting." He had a vague sort of satisfaction about him when he said that that seemed to indicate that he was enjoying this situation. But of course he wasn't. Her master couldn't enjoy anything, let alone feel satisfaction. Or so he believed, but that was a conversation for another time.

"What of our plans for the Void? We don't know the inheritor of her power, what of that? Shall we at least order a search?" she broached the most dire question Cromwell's mistake had left them with. They'd kept an eye on the girl, but they didn't need her yet, and she hadn't shown any inclination of fleeing, so they'd simply kept her under watch. And Cromwell's men had insured that she received a portion of Fouquet's earnings, so she was taken care of; though it was odd that she'd never seemed to question why there would occasionally be money piled at the door.

"No, the Void will come to the surface on its own," he said before gliding out of the war-room. A final decision, then. It was not what she'd been hoping for, but she could only hope that in giving Cromwell so much leeway, he'd have enough rope to hang himself.

"Gah, that man . . . Very well, master," she whispered to his fading footsteps. She went to take another sip, only to find her goblet empty. "More wine!" she commanded one of the maids standing idly about. "And could someone find me a new messenger?!"

* * *

Louise, along with the rest of the student body, was standing in the repaired Vestri Court. Not her Familiars though, they'd thankfully wandered off somewhere. They could be anywhere from the kitchens to the library, but so long as it wasn't here with her, she was fine with it. The obtaining of Geass had changed little, if anything. They were just as enigmatic as before, only now she had a small lead on them. Where once she'd been blissfully unaware, but now it bothered her. Now she was interested, but they still revealed nothing! It was so utterly vexing to her that they seemed to know so much about her when, to her, they were nearly strangers. She knew them, she knew their personalities, but they were unknowns at the same time. She was the Master, she should know who her Familiars were, but no, nothing. They'd yet to divulge any useful information on anything since naming her power, and really, one could argue that they hadn't been forthcoming since she'd summoned them. And those whisperings that she'd heard near them had become so much more common. Surely that was a sign of madness, that the stress from living, nearly sleeping, with perfect strangers was beginning to take its toll on her psych. But she'd digressed from her original point. Louise was standing alone in the crowd gathered in the courtyard, or she had been alone before Kirche and Tabitha had joined her.

Louise was still rather iffy on the idea, but Kirche had proven herself to not be . . . quite as bad as Louise had thought. She was boisterous and rude, and an obnoxious flirt, but she wasn't nearly as dumb as Louise had previously believed. Which made her choice of friends even more bizarre, not just to Louise's eyes, but to the whole school. That was not to say that Tabitha was a poor friend, for she wasn't. The petite indigo haired girl was quiet, succinct, but she wasn't dull. Her few words tended to be well chosen, as she managed to convey complete thoughts in far fewer words than Louise could manage. An odd group, certainly, but perhaps it was not so bad as she'd imagined. Now they, as a trio, were politely forcing their way through the pack of students blocking the view. The view, of course, was what they'd all gathered in the court to see.

The school had assembled in the Court after receiving word that Her Majesty, Henrietta de Tristain would be making a short stop at the Academy before continuing on her journey to Germania for diplomatic negotiations. The visit had come as a complete surprise, and all of the professors seemed anxious that the Princess would find the courtly demeanor of their students lacking. After all, beyond magic, they were supposed to teach the fledgling nobles the trivium. So they'd run about like headless chickens before cancelling all classes for the day and herding the even more confused students out to receive the royal party. Said party could be seen entering the gates from Louise's new location at the front of the crowd. "Look, Louise, Tabby! Unicorns, griffins, the whole shebang. Your Princess is traveling with a veritable menagerie!" Kirche teased. And it was true that they were flaunting a tad, but the robust Germanian obviously did not understand diplomacy.

"Yes Kirche. But know you nothing of diplomacy? The procession is meant to be grand! It must showcase the incredible economic might that Tristain has at its disposal! Yes, those are unicorns and griffins, but you seem to forget something! Tristain is not a natural habitat for those magical creatures. Each and every one has been captured, bought, or otherwise obtained from out of country. Before you stands, " she paused to look over the creatures before continuing. "Before you stands, to my estimate, roughly two million écus in Tristain economic might!" Louise was thoroughly engrossed in her speech by the end that she'd ended up shouting, which brought the attention of those nearest to her, namely Kirche.

"Oh, you were saying?" Kirche turned to look at Louise with a vague expression. "I'm afraid I didn't catch that."

Not a thing? She'd been speaking for more than a minute! "Forget it then, it was of no consequence," she muttered, blushing with frustration. She shouldn't even be trying to talk with Kirche, she was a Vallière!

"Apologies," Tabitha said quietly to Louise on her friend's behalf. So she'd been paying attention, at least. That was one of the reasons Louise liked Tabitha, she could always listen; even she wasn't always interested, though, but she tended to be polite about it, at least.

"Fine, then," she said with some small reluctance. It wasn't with every person that Louise could be forgiving, yet she was almost constantly forgiving her reluctant friend for things that she really shouldn't. But her little rage quickly sputtered out as the Princess stepped out of her carriage, so the thought was pigeonholed for another time.

"Her Royal Highness of the Kingdom of Tristain, Princess Henrietta has arrived," the Cardinal announced before offering her his hand.

"Pretty," Tabitha commented before returning to whatever she was reading today. Louise didn't try to keep up, her laconic friend simply went through books too often for her to become interested in any particular one. And what she'd said was true, the Princess was pretty, just as Louise recalled. Her dark hair still had that purple tinge to it, a trait of royalty. Regrettably, there was a definite gap between their respective bust sizes, in fact there was a definite gap between just the Princess' bust alone . . . But beyond that, Henrietta didn't look so different from when they were childhood playmates. It wasn't like her eyes had grown bluer or her nose had grown enormous, she'd simply become a bit curvier here, a little more defined there. But Henrietta didn't come to the Academy to compare cup sizes with a long forgotten childhood friend, so Louise turned her attention to less intimate things such as . . . whatever else would compel the Princess would stop here.

"Say, Louise, whose the priestly fellow holding her about? I wasn't aware that your Princess had a consort," Kirche at least attempted to be discrete, whispering into her ear, but she came far closer than was required to whisper; Louise could feel the redhead's hot breath, and it wasn't such a stretch of her imagination to imagine she felt lips.

"K-K-K . . . Kirche!" she forced out, slowly pulling away from whom she was addressing. "Sh-She's the Princess Kirche, pure as can be! How can you b-be so crass!" But the fiery spirited girl just guffawed, like she'd made some incredibly lame pun.

"Norm," Tabitha wasn't helping the situation, it seemed!

"Don't worry Louise, I wont steal the git, divine heat mixes poorly with smoldering Zerbst passion! There is a hole in my bosom where the man could but fit!" Her reply was an exercise in stagecraft, as if she was lamenting against fate itself for preventing her from pursuing the man.

"Well all very well and good, von Zerbst, but he's the Princess' regent until her coming of age! Do respect him!" she replied tersely, attempting to avoid garnering attention.

"I would like to thank all of you for coming out to greet me on such short notice," Henrietta spoke gracefully, her words smooth and flowing. This would have elicited great apologies on the student's behalf if she were anyone else, such was her carriage, but this was the Princess. They instead gave small bows, accepting without question.

"I'll try . . ." Kirche trailed off, obviously far too distracted by Princess Henrietta to have put any thought into forming a response.

"You had best. Now come, it's best not to hang about the Princess, you might sully her," she began herding the redhead towards the school.

"Starving," Tabitha stated, indicating Louise with her staff whilst trailing behind them. Why yes, dear Tabby, thank you for noticing, but now is not the time for your teasing.

"My, Louise, is it so?" Kirche taunted. "How very dainty of you!"

* * *

Henrietta de Tristain, accompanied by her regent Cardinal Mazarin, was currently walking the halls of the Tristain Academy of Magic, guided by a Professor that had introduced himself as Colbert. They were soon to be at the Headmaster's office, where there were things to be discussed. She hadn't expected the large turnout of students, she'd actually hoped that this visit would be something of a secret. But Mazarin had sent word of their coming, and with what they'd come to talk about, a public appearance to raise morale was perhaps ideal.

Their group arrived at the doors of Headmaster Osman's office, where Professor Colbert opened the door for her before leaving them to their privacy. The Headmaster, a man beyond age with drooping eyes and curtains of hair, sat behind an oaken desk idly smoking his corncob pipe and speaking to his familiar, a little white field mouse. "Ah, yes my friend. It has been far too long," he sighed before leaning in further. "The Princess, you say? The Princess . . . the Princess!" he jumped out of his seat, finally taking notice of her. "And Cardinal Mazarin, as well! To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?"

"We . . . sent a letter informing you of our coming, Headmaster. Surely you know this, you did assemble the students, did you not?" Henrietta couldn't help but feel confused. Was this man of a sound mind?

"Oh, so that's why I did that . . ." the old wizard trailed off, giving a thoughtful 'hmm' taking a puff from his pipe. Perhaps it would be best if the man stepped down, if he was truly going senile . . . "Well then, what was it that you wished to speak of? Your letter, now that I recall, simply said you'd be visiting to discuss matters of great import," he mentioned by way of asking. A rather tactful response; perhaps he was not so senile as he appeared, then.

"We would consult you on matters involving your rebellious secretary," Mazarin said coolly. He was a bit too diplomatic with the fellow, in her honest opinion.

"Ah, that," Osman trailed off darkly. His expression shifted slightly; the attack on his school had angered him greatly. "What of it? Has she hanged yet?"

"I'm afraid not. She's . . . escaped, as far as can be told. Her guards were incapacitated before she left, presumably with whomever decommissioned the watch," Henrietta spoke evenly, as her stature dictated she should.

This was obviously not what the Headmaster had hoped to hear, if one were to watch his grip on his pipe tighten as she spoke. "Then what could you possibly want from me? I didn't catch her the first time, I certainly can't do it this time."

"We would wish to know what method of torture was applied before she was delivered to Genoa," the Cardinal answered.

"Torture?" the ancient wizard questioned.

"Yes, torture. Surely you will have to share your methods with the palace, unless you intended to keep something so valuable a secret?" Mazarin replied, though Osman seemed rather nonplussed by the implied insult.

"I can assure you, there was no torture—I would not stand for such a vile thing on my campus. She was kept in holding until we were able to send her to Tristania," the old Mage seemed baffled by the question. "What could possibly lead you to such a conclusion?"

"Then it was not you? She acquired the dreadful inability to remain silent on the road to Genoa? That seems unlikely, the guards reported that she'd been inconsolably sobbing since they'd picked her up." The distrustful edge to the Cardinal's voice was beginning to become far more blatant, but Henrietta saw no reason to disbelieve the Headmaster before she'd heard his thoughts on the matter, so she signaled for Mazarin to let the man speak.

"That, then . . ." he trailed off again before speaking. "We couldn't figure that out either, I'm afraid. We checked, but there were no traces of foreign magics on her. We found her after she failed to smash into the vault with a golem, tore up the courtyard whilst she was at it too, had to get Miss Chevreuse to fix that up. She was just sitting their, balling her eyes out, asking for forgiveness for all sorts of things I'd never heard of, like she was at confession or something. Nearly pitied her for that. The girl apparently lost it when she failed and broke down after being overtaken by one of the students. As far as could be told, there was nothing more to it." The Headmaster made sure to tick off every point with a pointed gesture of his pipe before continuing on, and when he finished he took a draught of his pipe, only to find it'd gone out.

"Is that all, then, Headmaster?" Mazarin asked, frustration evident.

"Why, yes, I do believe so, Cardinal. I must ask, what did the thief say that has you so interested in turning your prisoners into incessant whiners?" Henrietta took this as her cue to speak.

"If what could be discerned and pieced together from her constant confessions was true, then things will be taking a turn for the worst, I fear," she stated, voice thick with melancholy.

"Is it that bad?" He seemed concerned.

"I'm afraid so. Longueville, as you know, was an assumed name. But Fouquet was an alias as well, it seems. Her true identity is apparently that of Mathilda de Saxe-Gotha, a disgraced noble from Albion. She claimed to be working for the coup, Reconquista, taking place in that country under threat to a loved one," she supplied.

"Such a bold move . . ." he mumbled. "Then war is imminent." It wasn't a question, simply an admission of understanding.

"Yes, it is so, Headmaster Osman," Mazarin answered disdainfully. "Come, Princess. This man can offer us nothing more," he said before storming from the room. He was disappointed, she knew. But she couldn't say she felt the same way, she didn't truly wish to treat prisoners more arbitrarily than was already done. She made to join the Cardinal when the Headmaster spoke up once more.

"Something that may find useful, my dear," he started, pausing to relight his pipe. "The student that was found with Fouquet, I believe you know her. A girl by the name of Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. That should be familiar, I believe. You were childhood friends, no?" he spoke, a nostalgic warmth for days gone by in his voice.

"Yes, yes we were." Henrietta couldn't help but crack a smile, it'd been years since she'd spoken with Louise.

"Then maybe it would be best if you were to pay her a visit. Perhaps she knows more about occurred. Or perhaps you might just have a reunion, yes?" his eyes shined with memory; recalling his own childhood, however long ago it was, it seemed.

"Perhaps so, Headmaster," she said with a tinge of excitement before finally gliding out of the room, her next destination decided.

* * *

Louise was pacing her room as her Familiars watched her. They seemed interested in her, almost as if they knew what she was thinking. Maybe they were, there was no way to tell, but it wasn't so unbelievable. Louise felt unsettlingly transparent right now; she lacked her usual composure, an untrained farmhand could likely notice her disquiet. She paced lest she stand still to think, for surely she would think of times when she was a royal playmate. Fond memories, yes, but they could be disastrous if they lead her to approach the Princess uninvited. There were no penalties for such a thing, but if she were to discover that Henrietta had all but forgotten her, it would be terrible! But she wished to, which made thinking dangerous. So she paced and avoided thought. Left, right, left, right. Reach the wall, turn back around. Left, right, left, right. Reach the other wall, turn back around. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was terribly dull. L.L. was following her with his eyes whilst C.C. turned her entire head to follow the path Louise was treading, but the same thing could be said for both of them: they had something evident in their eyes. Louise would say that amusement was evident, but she couldn't verily tell what was so evident, only that there was something. At least the whispers were not to be heard at this time, that was one thing. The room was silent but for her breathing and the 'click' 'click' of her hurried steps to and fro.

'Click' 'click' 'click' 'click' 'clack' 'click' stop. That hadn't been a 'click'. That had been a knock at the door. 'Clack'. And another. Company? Louise wasn't expecting Tabitha, who knocked much more softly, and the knock hadn't been accompanied by any yelling, so it wasn't Kirche. But who else could it be? Louise wished there was a peephole, but there wasn't one, and she'd like as not be too short to see out one anyways, so she was forced to open the door. Standing outside the room was someone she'd never thought she'd have at her door. It was Guiche.

"Ah, Louise, dear, I have wish to speak with you in private, may I come in?" he asked in a far more polite, if still just as vain, tone than she was accustomed to hearing from the boy. Was he trying to woo her? Now was a terribly odd time to do so, after disdaining her for so long. Even after witnessing the summoning he'd not become any more sociable, though he did stop teasing her. But Louise was not one to turn away guests, and the presence of her Familiars would certainly keep him from attempting anything distasteful.

"Yes, come right in." She lead him to the table and sat across from him. "Shall I send for wine?" He shook his head.

"No, no, I'll not be long," he insisted. "I need only . . . consult you. On a matter I deem beyond the scope of man." He seemed sincere, something Louise had believed him incapable of. She nodded her consent, she would hear him out. She had nothing better to do, and the fop appeared to be genuinely troubled by something, so she settled into her chair and gestured that he should continue. "Very well, then. I have come to this point of decision, and I need a more . . . feminine opinion on the matter. You struck me as a resilient girl, so I decided to seek your thoughts."

"Why not ask one of your girlfriends, then? What was the current one? Montmorency, I think?" Louise asked, growing skeptical of his pure intentions.

"Or Katy?" C.C. added helpfully from the near couch, though Louise hadn't heard of a Katy.

"Or Mariota?" L.L. added just as helpfully. And just as helpfully, in union, they continued to list names: "Or Jacquette, Thomasine, Lettice, Denys, or Petronilla?" before settling back down on the couches, once more ignoring them. Guiche apparently was far more successful than she'd previously thought. That would be eight at once! That wasn't two timing or three timing or some such, that was juggling! Had the boy a death wish? She'd certainly grant it if he was so bold as to cheat on eight women! Speaking of him, he hadn't moved since they'd stopped, was he just now noticing her Familiars? Whatever came over him passed quickly enough, though.

"Hey! Denys was an accident!" he huffed indignantly. "But, I would concede that therein lies the crux of my predicament," he attempted to explain. Louise held herself and made certain that she wasn't going to reach across the table and slap him. "Whilst not even I am so bold as to date sev—eight women at once, I haven't any qualms with balancing multiple relationships. I am, after all, a rose, of sorts. A rose blooms for everyone, to spread its message, its love to as many as possible." Louise could not for the life of her figure out why Guiche would tell her something so ridiculous as that, was he masochistic, did he wish for bodily harm? Her impending ire must have been evident, because he hurriedly continued his flowery metaphor. "Recently, I have come to understand that roses are rare. When one attempts to plant more than a single flower in their pot, all of them wilt. One must make the choice of which flower to save at the cost of losing the rest. Do you understand?"

"I think so," she nodded. "You got caught two-timing, didn't you?"

"No! I am not so uncouth that I would seek tandem relationships if I couldn't hold them," he answered, shaking his head vigorously.

"What, then? Have you difficulty in finding more prey?" Louise sneered.

"Heavens, no. The crux, Louise, is that I wish to—to end my pursuits in the hope that a single flower might bloom."

"Then what holds you back? What are you asking me, Guiche de Gramont?"

"I have already decided which flower I hold with the highest regard and wish to save, but I must ask a you, how do I go about saving it?" he asked with desperation in his voice.

"Guiche, what lead you to such a thought? Whilst, as a woman, I must approve of your choice, why have you made it? Surely such a drastic change in your world-view was influenced by something?" she inquired with much interest. Guiche had never struck her as one to develop feelings for someone, let alone ask for help in dealing with women.

"I had hoped to avoid speaking of that . . . I was—I volunteered for a shift as one of the guards that watched over Fouquet in her waiting cell. She cried, Louise. And cried and cried and—and it was maddening! So I spoke to her, I asked her why she would attack the Academy and still she cried. But she cried less when she spoke of her reasons, so it was bearable. Or so I thought," he paused dramatically. "For when she talked, Louise, she told me that she did it for love. She phrased everything she said as an apology, but when she spoke of her reasons, I felt it. She'd gone and done such things, been broken into a blubbering mess, all for love." He looked into her eyes and grabbed her hands before finishing. "Louise! I wish to have such a feeling! Something so enduring as love! Do you not understand?" There was water in his eyes, he'd come to her to seek advice on . . . true love. Louise was speechless, she hadn't a clue what to tell him. How does one go about remedying such a situation? One has a Princess walk in on this scene, that's how.

"Oh my, I'm not interrupting, am I?" none other than Henrietta de Tristain asked. Louise's response was, of course, the ever-intelligent 'whuhh?' accompanied by the eternally popular eye blink of dumbness. Guiche, lady killer that he was, recognized their situation quickly enough to remove his hands and give Louise a curt 'thank you' before politely bowing out of the room. It took Louise more than a handful of seconds to reorient herself and realize that, yes, the Princess was indeed standing at her door.

"I-I . . . umm . . . n-no, nothing at all!" she shouted before trying to collect herself. Remember, dust your skirt off and look proper in the wake of devastation! "To w-what do I owe this honor, my Ladyship?" She made sure to curtsy.

"Are old friends so distant these days?" she asked before taking out her staff and waving it about and chanting a short incantation, filling the room with particles of light.

"Surely you jest, my Ladyship," Louise managed, purposely not mentioning the Princess' impromptu silencing spell.

"Nonsense, nonsense! It's been far too long, I say, Vallière," she said before grasping Louise tightly around the shoulders. "Far too long," she choked out. It appeared that she was tearing up . . .

"I'm unworthy of such sentiments, Your Highness." There was definite strain in her voice, holding back was proving difficult, as she'd imagined.

"Whatever," she pulled away and dried her tears, "Whatever would make you believe such a thing? Are you not my friend Louise Françoise?" She seemed dejected. Louise hadn't had a clue she'd meant so much to Henrietta, it was a pleasant thought. But was it certain?

"You are far beyond my station, my Lady. I could not presume such a thing, a lowly third daughter such as I," she answered demurely, bowing her head.

"Then presume, my friend! Because were we not once friends? Cannot that still hold true?" she spoke passionately, convincing Louise that there was no implied jest. So they were still friends, that was an enormous relief, yet . . . what to speak of?

"Then I'll take your word on it and share what is mine, Princess," she answered, the strength returning to her voice and her eyes returning to meet her returned friend.

"Louise, it's Henrietta, I insist." There was a sincerity in the Princess' gaze, a deep longing to return to times when they were younger and things were uncomplicated by courtesans and dignitaries.

"Henrietta, then . . . What brings you here?" Louise guided Henrietta to sit where Guiche had been but the minute before, though the Princess sat far more primly than the popinjay.

"The Headmaster informed me of your attendance, so I thought I might visit," she paused to take breath and gained a pensive look. "He also mentioned that you were the one who," she paused again, to choose her words carefully, " . . . broke, yes that shall do, I think," she nodded, satisfied with her choice. "The one who broke Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt."

"I—yes," she admitted sheepishly. "That seems to be the general consensus, I suppose. Is she truly so far gone?"

"She was, yes. She's . . . escaped, I'm afraid. But not before, well, asking for forgiveness for two days," she answered somberly. "Most of the things she cried about were inane, but she occasionally apologized for rebellion . . . and the coming of war." She spoke carefully, as if stepping on eggshells, but that was understandable. War.

"Albion?" Henrietta nodded silently. "Then, your trip to Germania?"

"We must prepare, Louise. Our economy holds much power, but we can only hope it is enough to buy the Germanian's support. We haven't the military to support a war, and with an agent of the Reconquista rebellion placed so closely to the capital, it's inevitable. I go to parlay for alliance, we must pray that I succeed." She stopped to catch her breath, and Louise took that as the end. So there was no up side? No good news? Just a looming, quite literally looming, threat.

"It can't be avoided?" she wondered aloud. "Then . . . is there anything that I could do to help? I may not be very capable," and Henrietta was the only person she'd admit that to, "but certainly there is something a friend could do?"

Henrietta slumped onto the table, not raising her head to speak. "There is naught that is to be done, my friend," she sighed before continuing, "Whilst I love you dearly . . . I'm afraid that there's little that a single student would be capable of." She raised her head, hope entering her voice, "Unless . . . how far have your magic studies progressed, Louise?"

Louise's gaze darkened, returning the slump to the Princess' shoulders. "I'm still a dot Mage," she mumbled, snatching the hope from her friends eyes. "But . . . what if I were to tell you that I could repeat what happened to Fouquet, that anyone could . . . brake."

"Oh, what have you done, to make such an offer?! Such a terrible power, how could you possibly have something so sinister?" Henrietta stood taking her hands, but unlike Guiche, Louise could not meet her gaze.

"It is the power of my Familiars," she murmured.

"Familiar? Then what manner of creature is it, to have such a frightful talent?" she searched the room, "I see nothing . . ."

"Familiars, Princess Henrietta," L.L. said smoothly as he stood up from the far couch were he'd previously gone unnoticed by said Princess, visibly unsettling the her. He slid into a bow, something Louise had been unaware he'd been trained to do. Another clue to puzzle over later, perhaps she'd share her findings with Kirche, she liked puzzles. "That would be us," he finished.

"Us?" she asked warily. The Princess obviously wasn't comfortable being alone with strangers in a room that prevented the escape of sound.

"Mhfrfm," C.C. attempted to speak up whilst she poked her head over the near couch. She failed miserably, of course; but one would have to concede that the effort was there, even if said effort was overcome by a mouthful of pizza. Though Louise could have sworn that she'd heard a greeting floating through the air accompanying C.C.'s own muffled one. Although Henrietta hadn't heard the ethereal greeting, she appeared to understand the gist of what C.C.'d been trying to convey.

"Ah, charming, isn't she?" L.L. teased.

"Yes, charming," the confused royal replied. "And you are?"

"I am known as L.L., and this is C.C. We are, as Louise said, her Familiars," he waved about theatrically as he talked whilst somehow keeping a straight faced.

"My, what strange names names you have," she stifled a giggle before turning back to address Louise. "But you seem to have summoned Familiars that fit well with such odd appellations. You'll have to recount me on how such a thing came about. To not only summon a human, but two at once?"

"Yes, they're thoroughly titillating, I can assure you." No, Louise would most definitely never be sarcastic with the Princess!

"Ah, but they don't seem so evil," she observed. Which was true, one would never expect them to be capable of what had happened to Fouquet. But then again, they weren't responsible. Not that Louise would be sharing that piece of information—not yet at least. They'd specifically told her that to inform others was to force her altered fate on them, something Louise wished to avoid with her friend.

"They aren't practiced in the art of intimidation, I'm afraid. They're much more skilled at . . . knowing." No, she wasn't making in-jokes the Princess would miss, never.

"Information then? That would be much more useful, if it could be done without killing the spirit," she said, a slow smile forming ever so delicately.

"That could most definitely be arranged, m'lady," L.L. stated smoothly—yet again. His choice of words wasn't particularly genteel, yet he spoke as if they were the most refined words in the dictionary. Where had her Familiar learned such eloquence? It was such a frustrating mystery, further frustrated by the fact that it would not be solved in the foreseeable future if one followed the frequency at which such things of importance were revealed to her. Bah! Damned Familiars.

"Then I suppose that there is a task that you mightn't find too difficult," Henrietta said with waning trepidation. "There are likely to be whisperings of the coming war amongst the common folk before I am returned from Germania. It would be most helpful if you could discover their opinion on the matter of our alliance with the Germanians; they'll no doubt guess why I've gone there during such troubling times. Germania is not well liked, I'm afraid. The royal network collapsed after the death of the King, so we are . . . at a distance from the public." Or, as a commoner would put it, even further from the public than usual. "But morale is a major facet of war, such things must be known. Could I rely on you for such a thing, Louise Françoise?" she pleaded.

"Consider it done Henrietta! Anything for Queen and Country!" Louise replied earnestly. Henrietta was obviously not Queen yet, but she stood as first in the line of succession, so it wasn't questioned that she would ascend the throne soon.

"Ah, thank you! You have nary a clue what this means to me, to one in such a position as I!" Henrietta grabbed her hands once more, this time pumping them emphatically.

"Think nothing of it! We are friends, are we not?"

"Excuse me ladies, but someone is coming. It would be wise if you were to depart, m'lady," L.L. interrupted.

"Coming? But how could you possibly—" Henrietta trailed off. She'd sealed off sounds, but that didn't prevent the floor from vibrating. "Then I must go. Oh, if only I didn't have to depart so soon, we've but just reunited!"

"Things will be fine, Henrietta. You'll visit on your way back, won't you? Elsewise, however would we share our findings? No worries, go, go," Louise shooed.

"Yes, then I'll be back," she crooned, embracing Louise once more before dispelling the sound ward and leaving.

"We'll be going to town then?" C.C. asked from her seat.

"Yes, I think tomorrow we'll start," she answered. Yes, on the morrow.

* * *

It was now the morrow, bright and early—far earlier than Louise of her Familiars tended to wake. But she wished to be of use as soon as possible, so she woke them by means of crawling out of her bed, stepping on them all the way. That would teach them to sleep sprawled over her mattress! Or not, Louise doubted that'd stop them. Once they'd gone to the kitchens to break their fast, they'd ridden out. Louise had expected the ride to be longer than it was, but they made good time—a good thing, if only she had any idea how to go about collecting information. The Princess had suggested that she speak to the commoners, yet every layman she attempted to talk to either rudely ignored her, which went along the lines of:

_"You, commoner. I demand a word with you," Louise commanded._

_"I'm afraid you won't be having one, milady. Steal from elsewhere," he brushed her off gruffly. He brushed her off! How dare a mere commoner do such a thing! And to steal? Thievery was far below her station! But when she'd turned to explain as much, he'd disappeared back into the market crowds;_

or else they became a useless font of local gossip! How would that be of any use to her? She had no use for hearsay, Louise was searching for the opinions of the people! If only she'd thought to bring her money, that would have helped. She could get a room for the night, she could bribe someone to talk, she could hire a maid. But she'd only brought enough to stable their horses, as she'd spent the vast majority on her Familiars in recent times. She'd have to send home for funding early, it seemed. Unless . . .

"A gambling den, Louise?" L.L. asked her. "Feeling lucky, are we?" he raised his brow.

"We haven't a choice," she replied before entering the poorly maintained hovel. The dingy commoners there eyed her greedily—she'd have to show them how superior a noble was. She spotted what looked like a game of dice, but she didn't recognize the rules so she avoided it. She wished there was a card game, but she couldn't expect so many ignorant people to play when most of them couldn't read what was written on the cards. In the corner stood a roulette game, a game played by those at all levels of society; something she wouldn't be ashamed to play—it was bad enough to rub elbows with so many commoners.

"I don't suppose there's a game of chess to be found around here?" L.L. asked her. C.C. flicked him in the forehead after, for whatever reason. Louise wasn't interested in their squabbles enough to ask.

"No," she shook her head, "chess is noble fare, you'd be lucky to find a game of draughts." He seemed disappointed at her reply, another puzzle piece which she noted for later before homing in on the wheel. "Wish me luck!" she threw over her shoulder, taking out her coin purse.

The wheel was already stopping when Louise reached it: red. "You know the rules, lady?" the greasy shooter asked, to which she nodded before placing a bet. The ball had last landed on red, so she put ten twenty on black. The ball began spinning around the wheel, going 'whir' 'whir' 'whir' before coming to a stop on black. "'Ere you go," the shooter coughed past his cigarette as he doled out her winnings. Her winnings! She'd won! But next . . . what to bet next . . .

"Bet even," she heard from somewhere behind. Yes, that would do. She couldn't hold back a triumphant smile when the 'whir' of the ball stopped on even and the shooter was forced to hand over another forty écus. Twice in a row! Louise rubbed her hands together with anticipation before putting fifty on the first twelve. 'Whir' 'whir' 'whir' and 'clack' as the ball stopped on one. It was so much more pleasant a 'clack' than the 'clack' of Guiche at her door! This was the 'clack' of yet another win! She smiled smugly at the disbelieving shooter before taking her winnings.

"You an't magicking it, is ya?" he said, removing his burnt out cig. "'Cause if'n you are, we got ways to deal with cheats." Finished speaking, he lit another.

"Why—I'd never lower myself to such a thing!" she shouted over the din of mugs of cheap ale at the chain smoker. "I'll have you know, commoner dog, that this is simply the difference between folk of your ilk and people of my caliber." she announced haughtily whilst gesturing elegantly, sending him into a grumbling fit. "Now, roll the ball once more, I am in need of quick money."

"Oh, ya is, is ya?" he seemed to get a rise out of what she'd just said. She hadn't a clue what was so humorous, but he did dig the ball back out of his pocket, so she didn't pay it any mind. She bet again, eighty écus on red this time. 'Whir' 'whir' 'whir' 'whir' and 'clack' as the ball stopped on red, only to slid onto black at the last second. She'd lost! But things like this did happen, it was a game of chance after all, so she bet ten on the middle twelve. A win. That was acceptable. The wheel spun again: red. Another win, another twenty. But when she bet fifty again, she lost. Well that wasn't very good . . . she was back with the forty she'd started with.

"Ah, let's leave, little Louise, it's no fun when the bets are stacked against you," C.C. complained. But Louise had come to have some tolerance for her Familiars in recent weeks, so she promptly ignored her, choosing instead to bet thirty on the middle row. The whirring of the ball seemed to drag on far longer than it had before, and 'clank' was oh so much louder when it stopped again. Another loss . . .

"Come Louise, there will be no winning," L.L. whispered warning into her ear. But Louise would have none of that! The shooter was smiling far too smugly at her losses! She would prove him wrong and win back her money!

"Ten on black," she said stiffly, dumping out the remaining contents of her coin purse. She'd first won on black, it would surely not fail her in her desperate hour. 'Whir' 'whir' 'whir', she closed her eyes, 'whir' 'whir' 'whir'. The ball clacked with finality and she carefully peered from between her fingers. Green. Louise'd lost to green. But that wasn't complete failure, she'd get half her bet back, then she could go at it again . . . "I-I'll take my half," she said between laboured breaths.

"Uh uh, lil' Missy. I an't givin' la partage to some dressed up street walker, ya can vacate the premises and play noble gal elsewhere," he replied nastily before blowing a stream of smoke in her face.

"H-h-h-how dare you!" she screeched, her voice cracking. "I am a noble! I'll see you hanged for this!"

"No ya isn't," he laughed. "No noble needs 'quick money'! That's a hell of a joke, I tells ya! Ha, get outta here a'fore I get me cudgel and make ya get out!" he laughed again! "Here's a consolation prize!" he threw a fistful of coppers at her, letting them 'clack' onto the floor like so many winning rolls.

"I'll—I'll—" Louise tried to express her ire, but it was far greater than she could deal with. But . . . she had her wand! She began to shakily reach for it, a noble's ultimate tool, when a hand rested on her shoulder, forcing her to look up.

"Now is not the time to bring the bar down atop us all, Master," L.L. told her curtly before forcing her to turn to the door. Louise hadn't a clue how she heard him so well over the noisy gambling din, but she did. She attempted to fight him off, but C.C. joined him, and together they dragged her into the adjoining alleys.

"W-what is the meaning of this?!" she cried indignantly, "I am your Master! Obey me! I Will see that man dead! Unhand me!"

"You haven't a clue how to get back there, Master. And we'll surely not be showing you back," he said casually, coldly. She looked about, and truth-be-told, she was lost. She'd never been so far into the city's winding alleys and ghettos before.

"I-I'll make it back somehow," she replied sheepishly, twiddling her fingers.

"And do what? You haven't a copper to you at the minute. No credibility as either noble nor commoner."

"I'll think of something!" she snapped.

"You haven't thought of anything since we arrived in Tristainia," he snapped right back. "Have you forgotten your mission so soon? We're not here to gamble. Show me the Louise that summoned us."

That's right . . . She was Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, the girl who dusted off her skirt and made the best of desperate situations. But . . . "What do you suggest we do? Do we . . . beg?" she questioned in a disgusted tone that implied 'Are we so common?'

"Heavens, no!" C.C. smirked before pulling L.L. with her into the crowd. "Stay there for a bit and wave your wand about if anyone comes near." And then they were swallowed by the swarming masses, leaving Louise to poke about, only to reappear some minute later.

"Voilà!" they somehow managed exclaim in unison whilst keeping a completely neutral tone. Each removed several money pouches from pockets that Louise had been unaware they'd even had.

"None of them contains much, a few coppers here, an odd silver there," L.L. said stopping to let C.C. finish for him, "but it's an effective method, no?" by the look of things, they were far more pleased with themselves than, in Louise's opinion, they should be capable of. They'd stolen, taken from others; had they no shame?!

"I'm afraid not," C.C. answered her unvoiced question candidly. "Shame is a learned concept, little Master."

"Then your teaching was so rudimentary as to never learned it?" When that solicited no response from either of them, she took it to mean that she was right.

"No, Louise," L.L. started. Her Familiars shared a glance before he continued. "It would be more proper to say that we've had the enough time and imputus to unlearn it." Louise didn't know rightly how to respond to that, they didn't strike her as older than their late teens. Had they lived such dreadful lives? It didn't fit. They always left her these smatterings and bread crumb trails that lead nowhere! "You don't have to know how to respond," he stated judiously, "It's a matter of principle. What do you value more, a warm bed for the night or principle?" But . . . And . . . He was right, and Louise hated it. She'd gone and gambled away all their money, so they'd be stuck in Tristainia until they could pay the stable. She sighed as her shoulders slumped in defeat; they'd have to find suitable lodgings for the week whilst they worked up forty écus, and hopefully they could complete the mission at the same time.

"Aren't there any more honest means?" she put forth weakly.

"Lest you become the street walker you were just accused of being, then no, not for commoners," C.C. answered, only to continue and dash her hopes. "Without money, you're a commoner."

"But, my magic—"

"Is unreliable." That was true, and it hit far too close to home. "Sometimes, the ends justify the means. If you find this difficult, recall that we're aiding the Princess in protecting her country." That was a bit tough to swallow, but when it was put that way . . . Her friend needed her, the country needed her friend. She with nodded reluctant acceptance. She was loath to lower herself, but Louise was not a woman to go back on her word so easily, and as insignificant as her task seemed, she was familiar with the 'for want of a nail' proverb.

"Just how would one go about thieving?"

* * *

Louise decided that she hated commoner clothing. The first thing her familiars had done was buy her something coarse that lacked enough definition to be called any particular style. Fashionless. Bland. Itchy. The second thing they'd done was to dump dirt on her, at least she hoped it was dirt. So here she was, barefoot, dirty, and penniless. They'd remarked at how incredibly common she now appeared as if it was some major accomplishment.

That'd been days ago. It was past afternoon when she looked poor enough to suit their tastes, so they rented a room for the night and spent the next day 'unteaching her shame'. That went poorly she surmised, as the next day's subject was 'teaching her commonness', which involved begging and scrounging through waste bins and culminated with her Familiars denying her a room for the night, instead leaving her to shiver in the back alleys. At least the day's lessons had been useful for that, she been able to dig up a scrap of wood to huddle behind.

Louise'd never felt so horrid as she had upon waking this morning. C.C. prodded her awake and continued to do so until she actually stood up. She'd felt sore everywhere, dehydrated, and hadn't eaten since arriving. When she asked, L.L. told her they'd spent the last of what they'd stolen on last night's lodgings, and that she'd be learning about stealing today if she wanted to eat. Fair enough, Louise didn't much care about the methods so long as she could feed herself.

So now the lessons on misappropriation and purloining were to begin, and Louise hadn't any ideas on how to start. She was quickly inspired when L.L. dug something out of his pocket and closed her hands about it. It was a knife. "Am I to be a footpad, then?" she sighed bitterly. She didn't think she could truly stab a man for his pocket change, no matter how hungry she was.

"No. You're far too weak to do such a thing," C.C. answered matter-of-factly.

"I am not!"

"Yes, you are. You'll be doing this instead," said as he walked to the edge of the crowd. Remaining in view, he flicked a knife from the same pocket and proceeded to sever the strings of the pouch dangling from a distracted man's waist before returning at a comfortable pace. Moments later, his victim noticed the lightness of his missing purse and frantically went about yelling at all the pedestrians surrounding him. He failed to draw anyone's sympathy or attention and was promptly ignored.

"So, as you can see . . ."

"I'll be a cutpurse. I can live with that, so long as I'm not a cutthroat."

"You haven't the moxy to be a proper cutthroat. But you should be able to cut a few purses without any problems, so long as you keep light on your feet."

"I-I guess so . . ." she trailed off. "I'll be going then." There was no realistic way for them to teach her any methods, as they didn't have the time or resources to practice, so she'd just have to find out for herself.

As she slipped into the chaotic mass, ducking low to avoid drawing attention to herself, she spotted her first victim. He was a middle aged drunk lying sprawled in the street; an easy target, she thought. She made her slow way towards the man, fighting the flow of pedestrian traffic. He was indeed sprawled on the street, but when she reached for the money pouch that hung from his neck, she realized too late that it was gone. What happened was terrifying, indelibly so.

She screamed loud enough to catch attention, but it was lost almost immediately. Did they not see what happened?! The man hadn't grabbed her, as she had been worried he might. No, he was much too dead to do that. He'd been run through and left for the city watch to clean up. She looked up, but no one was paying the dead man any mind, like it wasn't a part of their lives. He was dead! But . . . what could she do? Nothing. He was a stranger and there wasn't anything she could do for him.

"Leave the dead sot be, girly. He an't worth the trouble," a passerby commented before continuing on his merry way. Not that she'd let that happen!

"You! Yes, commoner, you! May I have a word?" she commanded. He turned to look at her, more likely upset by her tone than in subservience, but he was listening for the time being. She may have been dressed as a filthy commoner, but she was still a noble! "What's happened to this man?"

"Do ya live in a hole?" he asked incredulously. "The bloke was one of them daft Albion revolutionists, I reckon," he went on, taking out a cigarette as he spoke.

Wait a minute. Louise recognized this commoner. He was that wretched shooter! The cigarette, the attitude, the heft; it had to be him. But why hadn't he recognized her? They'd argued but days ago! When she was—when she was dressed as a noble. He didn't recognize this filthy urchin she'd become as the prim and proper noble he'd thrown out of a gambling din the other day. "You! You filth! You did this to me!"

"Huh? What are you—" His eyes flashed with recognition, but she didn't let him finish.

"You're that pig! I will not excuse your insolence!" She could feel it, the power behind her eye, brimming, boiling. It wanted an outlet, it needed an outlet. "One does not tread on my pride with impunity!" A flash, and she could feel it leaving her and changing his mind. She didn't want another blubbering mess, especially in a place so public, but she would make this man pay. She would make him suffer.

"I'm terrible sorry miss! I'm sorry I cheated ya!" he exclaimed passionately. Huh, so that's what happened, he'd found a way to rig the game. That was a relief, that she was not truly so unfortunate.

Louise hated this man intensely. She wanted him dead. But she'd had time to think of other things the past days, and she was feeling lenient. "I do not take such things remiss. I will forgive you after a year and a day!" She then thought of something, bringing a sly smile to her thin lips. "And would you please forgive me if I take your money?" she asked sweetly.

"Of course! I could never hold anything against such a sweet little girl!" he answered, cracking into an enormous grin as he handed her his coinpurse. She opened it to take a peek inside. Well, I'll be . . . ! The man was extraordinarily wealthy for a commoner, he had nearly one hundred écus on him. "Thank you for being so forgiving, sir!" she called, toying with him once more as she walked away. It was always best to thank those that forgave you, after all.

She'd been gone for less than a half hour, so her Familiars were surprised to see her back. At least, she thought they were. It was her first time, after all, and expectations were low. Louise had expected that they'd say something along the lines of 'failed so soon?' when she returned, but she supposed her elation was a bit transparent, so their noncommittal 'well done, welcome back' wasn't so strange. Actually, when she thought over it, it was strange. How did they know she'd succeeded?

"Having fun with Geass?" C.C. wondered rhetorically. Louise chose to take it in stride, she had told the Princess their specialty was knowing.

"Yes, yes I was."

"Then you've begun to experiment with it?"

Oh, so that was how she was supposed to learn about it, then? "I suppose so," she said with a whimsical lilt to match her far-off expression, though it was short lived. She had things to do! She threw the coinpurse at L.L., who caught it with some difficulty, a winning smile plastering itself to her face. "But we won't be staying in the city any longer."

"You finally found what we were came here for?" she arched an eyebrow.

"Yep. Henrietta has nothing to fear, they outright killed a man for supporting Reconquista," L.L. nodded approval as she spoke. Approval, but not surprise.

"Very good, then let's collect our horses and go. If we hurry, we can make it in time for lunch." In time for pizza, more like it. She swore that was all they ate! But she nodded acquiescence and they began the winding route to the stable.

* * *

Lelouch couldn't believe the incredulous look on the stablehand's face when Louise marched in and demanded they be allowed to pay for the interring of their horses. It had been just gone downhill from there when she, what to him must have looked like a beggar, actually produced the money necessary to do so. They'd told her that it would be easier if they were the ones to get the horses, but no, she'd had enough of being a commoner. He'd half expected her to Geass the poor man when he asked that she complete a literacy test, but she did it, though she did keep sending him pouty little death glares. But that had been too much, and they couldn't help but stifle giggles, becoming targets of her ire as well. That'd made the ride back so much more peaceful—she was far too 'angry' with them to speak. Not that it was truly peaceful, things rarely were. Louise appeared to slowly be tuning into their conversations, which would be difficult to explain if she ever became convinced that she wasn't hallucinating. Long life made a man practical, though, so those thoughts quickly fled in the face of a current predicament.

Said predicament being the foppish man-child currently sitting in his Master's room once more. He'd come in, asking to speak with her, and seemed to grow progressively more emotive as he explained his predicament.

"Louise! You must help!" he whined, most of his usual petulant airs gone.

"I don't see why I should, Guiche," his master seemed exasperated more than anything.

"But you're the only one I've told about this! How can I ask anyone else?"

"You don't need to talk to anyone else! You talked to too many at once, wasn't that your problem?"

"Yeah, well . . . well, yeah! But that's what I was trying to fix," he admitted.

"Not all ships are meant to last. Especially when you try to keep a foot in each boat of the fleet," Lelouch commented from his place on the couch. They'd gone immediately to the kitchens for pizza upon returning and were now lounging on Louise's bed . . . thing. They didn't rightly know what to call two couches sandwiching a bed, but they took up the combined surface area of all three pieces of furniture. Whatever it was, it was were they'd chosen to eat pizza and listen to conversation.

"Well I want this one to sail! I would go down with this ship if given the chance."

"Oh? You would now?" Louise asked . . . with innuendo in her words. Perhaps they were rubbing off on her a bit too much?

'Witch, what am I missing?' He couldn't rightly see over the couch, but then again, neither could he be seen. She prodded him harshly before poking her head around the side of the couch to catch a glimpse, and what she depicted was worth a snigger of it's own right. Guiche was twitching in his seat like a toddler at a wedding whilst Louise's hands were steepled in front of her as she attempted to subdue her mounting exasperation. Even when being sincere, the boy just couldn't avoid overacting; and Louise's patience, though growing lately, which could mostly be attributed to her failed interactions with her Familiars, was being tested by the boy's whining.

"Y-y-you know very well that that was not what I meant!"

"Yes, well mayhap if you hadn't been a cheat in the first place you wouldn't be having this problem, ne?"

C.C. sent him another glimpse. "But that's what I was trying to fix," he defended, but his shoulders were slumped, belying his guilt.

'That's enough.' He knew what was happening now, no use seeing it. The kid had made the mistake of believing that if he was honest for once his 'chosen flower' would blossom. He didn't understand the human psyche enough to make such honesty believable, he'd probably blown his chances by giving that same flower metaphor speech again. It was oft-said that women were fickle, but this boy pranced around with their hearts and expected something beyond fickleness. Then again, humans as a whole tended to be fickle.

'What a sap,' C.C. criticized, but it obviously didn't hold much interest for her. 'Do they have pineapples around here? Hawaiian pizza would be nice.'

'Bonne idée! But no clue, we'll have to ask around.' The kitchens hadn't thought to play with the basic recipe yet, so a change would be nice.

"What good comes of telling me such things?" their Master finally asked.

"I-I may have asked that she come here."

"What?! Why would I want that woma—" 'clack.'

"Hello? I'm coming in," a girl called as she opened the door.

"W-why hello Montmorency. We were just talking about you. Please, come, sit," Louise forced out.

"Hi," Guiche squeaked. Lelouch could just imagine the pitiful hand-wave that usually accompanied such a greeting.

"Yes, thank you," newly named Montmorency answered stiffly. She could be head walking over to sit next to their little Master—as far from Guiche as possible whilst still sitting at the same table.

"Now then, what was it that you two wanted?" Louise prompted.

"Yes, mister Gramont, what did you want from me?"

'This will be a bit more interesting. Shall we?' Lelouch wondered.

'Yes, I think we shall,' she answered, so they snuck over to the edge of the couch nearest the table of young nobles and stuck their heads over the edge.

"Well I thought . . . that perhaps you might, uh, take me back, maybe?" he managed.

"I don't see why I should, you daft lech!"

"Because you love me?"

"Hardly," she shot him down.

"Then because I said I was sorry?" he attempted once more. One could hardly fault the guy for trying, he seemed genuine at least.

'But he's too stupid to live, I swear,' C.C. retorted. Lelouch had to agree with her on that point. He was too much of a coxcomb, he knew so little of dealing with adversity that it was almost like watching a toddler throw a fit over his favorite toy.

"Sorry for yourself, more like! If you really don't have anything more useful to say, then I think I might well hit you!"

"Well if you would just forgive me, everything would be fine!"

"I shouldn't have to! Don't act like this is my fault, Guiche!" They were both becoming far more emotive, the conversation was losing momentum. Terribly sad when you realize how frequently things like this happen, but it was still undeniably hilarious to Lelouch.

"Well maybe it is your fault?! Ever think about that?!"

'Aaannd there goes the conversation.' C.C. found it just as hilarious as he did. Young love was hilarious, youth was hilarious, love was hilarious. Moreso when combined.

Louise, who'd so far been patiently biding herself obviously didn't see the humor and decided that she'd had enough. "Desist, you two! This has gone on far enough! You will forgive each other, or you will not, but you will not do it here!" They both turned to angrily look at her, but she would have none of it.

"This has gone on far enough! You," she pointed to Guiche. "and you," she pointed to Montmorency. "love each other!" 'Clap!' she brought her hands together angrily. She sighed, replacing her calm façade before continuing. "You knew that he was a playboy when you began dating him. You knew how she would take it when you told her you'd been two-timing. Figure it out for yourselves! Or, better yet, here's an idea." Her eyes glowed mischievously.

Then her left eye with something glowed not-so-mischievous. "Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière would ask very kindly if you'd both forgive each other," she asked sweetly. Effects were immediately visible, as always.

"Of course, Louise!" they answered in chorus before turning to each other. "I'm terribly sorry, please forgive me," they asked each other, once more in chorus before giving discrete replies that both amounted to 'I could never hold anything against my love!' and jaunting out of the door hand-in-hand like a picturesque couple.

'Absolution indeed,' Lelouch observed. What a peculiar Geass. But their little Master was happy with her work, so all was well. Geass was a tool to be used, after all.

* * *

When he woke up, the moons were shining through a small window. He had trouble recalling what had happened before last he'd gone to bed. He'd promised to watch the smaller children whilst Mother Tiffania went out for supplies. Had he fallen asleep for a few minutes?

What was that smell? Maybe one of the babes had wet themselves. Whatever, it didn't really matter. What mattered was that he'd been sleeping on the job. Would Miss Tifa be mad at him? No, of course not. But he still didn't want to risk disappointing her.

Timothy stood up and stretched to get the feeling back in his legs before opening his eyes. He heard something fall to the floor when he got up. Oh, look, Miss Tifa fell asleep on his cot! She was really pretty, all the kids thought so.

She wasn't so pretty right now. In fact, she was what smelled. There was dried blood everywhere. It wasn't like the blood in the pictures, though. It wasn't red anymore. It was brownish. But that wasn't important. What was important was that it was blood. And it was old. And it smelled.

And flies flew past his ears. Tim turned to smack one that buzzed to close, only to be confronted with something even more disturbing.

All the other children were in bed too, like good little boys and girls. And they smelled too. But there wasn't nearly so much blood around them. They weren't cut all over like Miss Tifa. They all had one single cut right through their necks.

Tim shakily raised his hand to his own neck. It was rough were once it had been smooth. Where all the other children had bled out, he instead had a thick scar.

Tim looked down and saw what had clacked on the floor when he got up. It was Mother Tiffania's favorite ring. It didn't glow as prettily as it used to, but it was still really pretty. Tim decided to put it on his thumb.

And then Tim ran into the woods. Because he was eight. And he was alone again. Shock could only last so long before one has to cry.

Tim climbed a tree once he was far into the woods. He'd always been good at that. There were ants that bit his bare feet. But least there weren't any flies in trees. Or blood.

ODD#I(e)/5,iii;09Bcy3178

AN:

I was typing this, and Chrome seems to believe that the closest word to a misspelled Tristainia is Satanist . . .

The names for Guiche's 'girlfriends' were picked from the Serendipity name generator, so I give credit where credit is due.

This was my first dabbling in onomatopoeia, so I'd like to know how that went over.

I haven't a clue if the way I wrote the small flashback-esque piece in Tristainia is correctly written. The same would can be said about the accuracy of the roulette scene. Don't shy from correcting me if I'm wrong.


	4. 24 Hours Ago

**Everything I Touch**

_Chapter 4_

_24 Hours Ago_

C.C. was glad that their Master had turned out to be so malleable. Things certainly wouldn't have been very interesting if Louise wasn't so desperate. Well, that wasn't quite right; how desperate she was had no real weight in the matter. No matter their little Master's dispositions, they would have eventually broken her, but this was so much more fascinating. Give her Geass and a reason to use it and ta-da, one had an instant source of decisiveness! They hadn't quite expected her to take people's love lives into her own hands, but it was a good sign. Progress. Were they corrupting her? Enlightening her? The morality of the situation was completely subjective, but it could not be denied that they were affecting her, empowering her. Only slightly, though. Her conviction slipped away soon after using Geass, and she was once again Louise the Zero.

Louise the Zero, it turned out, had completed her mission long before the deadline of her monarch's return. And she was a student, after all, so back to school it was. The struggles of a histrionic teenage girl at school were a fairly dull subject, but much less so when the school was an academy for pampered young nobility to learn magics and snobbery. Even more interesting was the fact that their Master was a terrible failure at the practical application of her studies.

'Of course, Witch, it's only interesting when she throws a fit,' Lelouch reminded her.

'My humblest apologies, milord. Only a person of a birth so undistinguished as mine could ever enjoy something so common as temper tantrums.' Only the highest browed of humor for him, of course. He had a lineage.

'Surely. You enact them frequently enough.' A low, if not baseless, blow. He was desperate to win, to lower himself with such a forward approach. But she would not be bested so easily.

'Touché Lulu, touché. Your rhetoric has sharpened within these Academy walls, but we still won't be installing air conditioning,' she told him cockily, quashing his momentary victory. He may have lineage, but she'd been alive long before that lineage meant anything.

"Damnable Witch . . .," he grumbled aloud in response, catching their Master's attention. Louise looked over her shoulder as if to ask what he'd said, but she turned her head back around after a couple of seconds of slightly parting and closing her lips. She wasn't interested at the time, it seemed. She'd been like that since returning—disinterested, distracted, a bit air-headed—lost in thought and anticipating her liege's return. Sadly, the same could not be said for her poor Familiars, so they'd busied themselves with watching the Academy; biding for Henrietta's return with their Master, albeit for completely different reasons. The foremost reason was that nothing happened here, nothing particularly interesting at least. Louise's fits could only sustain them so long, but that would likely be remedied with the Crown Princess's return. Which would be today.

Not now, of course. But she'd be here later. Word had been received late the night before, sent by messenger owl. Owls were, of course, a completely terrible choice for carrying messages. Perhaps not so terrible an idea when they carry messages by night, as this one did, but C.C. could only assume that they usually weren't sent at night. And they had pigeons! They wouldn't have to clean the Academy walls nearly so much as they did if there weren't any pigeons. Whatever the Mages' reasoning behind choosing to domesticate owls over pigeons, they'd done it, and one had been used the night before to signal the Royal procession's return.

'Some interesting thoughts, C.C.,' Lelouch commented.

'Yours are none the better.'

'Hardly!' he scoffed, 'I'm a philosopher! My thoughts are far more profound than you could comprehend.'

'_Oh, Montmorency and Guiche make for such a cute couple!_ is such a deep thought for you to have, Lulu.'

'Yes, well ruminating on the domestication practices of wizards and witches is much better!' he bit back. She tried to come up with a dignified response to that, and certainly more than a few came to her, but they were all more response and less so dignified. The honest truth was that they were bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Not hungry, Lelouch had done a wonderful job with the pizza—but still entirely, dreadfully, nigh irrevocably bored. 'You might mention how histrionic you are to that list,' Lelouch prodded again. C.C. couldn't respond to that either, though. She appreciated the effort, but the banter had died for the moment. They were anticipating Princess Henrietta's return just as much as their Master was, maybe more.

Fate could be kind from time to time, however. Just one more of Louise's classes, and the Princess was scheduled to arrive after that. Louise would no doubt be summoned to speak with her. The students would still be going about their schooling then, though, so there would be no assembly—Mazarin had made it explicit that they not make such a commotion a second time. They weren't his words, of course, but Henrietta's. Everything he said was said with her authority, one could almost say that he was as much a Familiar to her as they were to Louise.

'What do you think of that Lulu?'

'Think of—' he stopped, to examine her thoughts she surmised. 'That . . . That's a good question.' And so they found something to ruminate on. Just in the nick of time, as they'd finished the walk to their little Master's next class. The question: What did Henrietta's Familiar look like?

* * *

Louise sighed as she entered the class. She was swamped by the schoolwork that she'd missed whilst playing the pauper, and she just wished that the class would be over and that Henrietta would get there sooner. And truth be told, she'd had a bit of a difficult time readjusting to Academy life. The squabbles, the abundance of food, the atmosphere; it was so very different from the streets of Tristainia. Not that she'd become accustomed to being a low-life, she was far above that! But it was all a bit much when she'd lived so austerely for a couple days.

Her Familiars helped little, as usual, but they were becoming a comforting constant throughout the tumult of her life. They were still relatively quiet and most definitely quite useless—for anything!—but they never changed, and that was something she just might have been relying upon. Relied on or not, they played the foil to Kirche's . . . robust nature. Her friends—she guessed that they did the things that friends did, and as they refused to go away and leave her in peace, so friends they were—were reliable as well, but they helped little in this instance. That was becoming a pattern, that someone would be incapable of helping her. At least her need for help would be gone soon, if this . . . damn . . . class . . . would just be over. It was utterly frustrating! And she couldn't even concentrate on the class, what with her Familiars making all those sounds. Of course she was the only one that could hear them, and she didn't actually have any proof that it was them, but she swore by Brimir that it was the most distracting noise she'd ever heard. It even occasionally sounded like conversation—conversation in languages she couldn't understand! Or recognize. It was worrisome.

"Mwa ma mwa ma wind mwa ma strongest mwa ma mwa magic mwa mwa mwa," Professor Kaita lectured on. She couldn't understand him. The noises from her Familiar's general area, she'd decided to call it that for sanity's sake, and the fact that she was just so sore with anticipation made hearing, no, thinking hard. So hard that she used the word hard, in fact. She dozed off for a bit. Or maybe she didn't. But there wouldn't have been any difference, so it didn't matter. What mattered was that there was a flustered maid asking her to come with her. Louise followed her to the door, her Familiars bringing up the rear of their little party, before putting forth the effort to understand her situation. A maid could only mean one thing! She couldn't help but wear a huge grin. Finally! After weeks of waiting, the Princess had returned.

The maid was speaking. "If you'll follow me, miss Vallière, I'll show you to your destination." It was odd, Louise didn't recognize this maid. Usually they sent that Siesta girl to run errands. Whatever, it didn't matter. Louise was fully capable of finding her way about the Academy, and there could be no dubitation as to who the maid was taking her to see, so it irked her a bit that they sent one to take her to the Headmaster's office. At least, it irked her until she realized that they weren't heading for the Headmaster's office.

"Where are we going?" she asked. It was best to be blunt with Commoners—she'd learnt that on the streets. She believed it had something to do with their incapability for intelligence.

The maid looked a bit peeved. "My name's Iona, since you forgot to ask. And we're heading towards the Void tower." Which they were, of course. It was odd in a way, and yet it wasn't. Nobody knew that the Princess was at the Academy excepting the staff, most likely; Commoners knew much that they shouldn't, she'd learned. So nobody of importance knew, making the need for secrecy a bit redundant.

"Well, Iona," the name rolled off her tongue smoothly, so Louise mentally cached it as a possible baby name. She was too preoccupied to chastise the maid for her presumptuous tone, and she wasn't in the mood, so she put it out of mind. "Hurry along," she said, making a shooing motion. She knew her own way across the Vestri Court. She'd have been simple if she couldn't, it wasn't like it was still wrecked from Fouquet's visit.

"I'm terribly sorry, but I was told to take you to your destination," Iona walked backwards a bit whilst replying. One could almost mistake her devilish smirk for an apologetic smile. Not quiet, though.

"Now listen here—" she began. But she was interrupted when the maid grabbed her by the hand and began running forwards. Reflecting on the conversation, Louise realized the maid had said she wasn't to show her to her destination, but that she would _take_ her. And that's what led to Louise being lead on a daisy chain with L.L. having grabbed her free hand and C.C. bringing up the rear. They were all being dragged along by a running Iona, who was fast enough that they were all incapable of anything _but_ being dragged, and they kept wiggling through the air from the energy of it!

Louise's indignant squawks peppered the air as she tried to reason with the abnormally strong maid, but it became clear to her what was happening when their human train neared the tower. One split second they were speeding through the Vestri court, only for that to change entirely the next. It was for good reason that Iona was leading them; she apparently knew her way through the high level illusion that was cast on the place. It appeared to Louise that they were running through brick walls and a battalion of orcs! Then they were within the home stretch and Louise could see the tower again. She prepared to call the maid off, when instead she quickened her steps and made a flying leap at the Void tower. This ended poorly for Louise, of course, as she lost her grip on the maid's hand midair and was sent hurtling into the castle wall. She narrowly missed bashing her head in!

When she went to tell the maid that, however, she was struck by a loud cry of "Louise Françoise!", which was quickly followed by being struck by an overwrought Princess. Not struck bluntly, of course, but Henrietta did engulf her in an enormous hug. Without releasing her, her friend continued to tell her how much she'd missed her on her trip, and that she wished that Louise had gone to Vindobona with her. Louise had to struggle out of Henrietta's iron grip before she could get a word in edgewise, a word that wasn't muffled by her friend's bosom, at least.

"Yes, it's wonderful to finally see you again, Henrietta," Louise said cheerfully. "Would you like my report, then?" she asked.

"Your report?" the Princess seemed perplexed, but eventually she understood. "Ah! The report! Yes, I'd love to. But first, come with me. Come, come. There's no point in meeting here if we don't use the facilities."

Louise couldn't help but agree, and truly, she was curious. No one used the Void tower anymore, that's what the teachers said. It was true—they found nothing to signal that anything but pigeons and rats and the occasional Commoner cleaning brigade had come through within the last hundred years, and certainly nothing had lived there, excepting perhaps the vermin. Beyond needing a little love, the whole place was rather unremarkable. The walls were the same stone as the rest of the Academy, the furniture was aged but plain, the shelves held a few dusty old books. Louise was disappointed to discover that the tower held no apparent mystery, it was simply old and abandoned and dusty. Henrietta decided that that wouldn't do for a meeting between ladies, however, so she cast a quick spell to pick up the dust and droppings in the room she picked for the occasion.

The Princess had chosen the tower's small student library for their meeting. She relaxed into a wooden bench located in one of the cubbies in the room and waved that they should join her. Louise slid in next to her friend, and her Familiars sat across the table. They were quickly sprawled languorously across the table and bench, which came as no surprise to Louise, but she made certain that the Master did not mirror her Familiars. Hopefully, one day they'd follow her example. Whilst she relished the thought of influencing her boorish Familiars, the maid, Iona, leaned into the corner facing them after setting the candle they'd been seeing by in the middle of the table.

Henrietta's dimly lit face shimmered as she spoke. "So, Louise, tell me, how are my people?" she asked softly.

She couldn't comprehend her friend's grave composure, but she figured that the good news would lift the Princess' doldrums. Louise cracked a smile as she assuaged Henrietta's unknown fears. "They are fine, or as fine as Commoners can be." She paused to let that soak in, and it did seem to relieve Henrietta's stress somewhat.

"Continue, then. What lead you to this conclusion? I trust that you were thorough." Of course she'd done a good job, she was a Vallière! Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière!

Louise nodded as she searched for her words. "Now . . . now, you must understand that they . . . well, they killed a man in broad daylight, the Commoners did." Henrietta's shocked expression told her all she needed to know, feedback wise, so she hurried to finish her statement. "But he was a dissenter. A rebel, maybe. I'm not quite sure—I found him after he was long dead. But either way he supported the coup in Albion, or maybe even he just spoke favourably of Reconquista. Things like that get you killed in Tristainia nowadays, that's what happened to him," she said.

Henrietta set her jaw grimly. "That's—I don't know what to rightly make of that. At once I'm relieved, and yet on the other side of things I'm ashamed and . . . disgusted. To kill a man for so little . . . But I suppose it's for the best that the people remain so loyal. How is it that you came by such troubling, no, such fortuitous information?"

Louise blushed with embarrassment as she tried to think of a way to explain what had happened without revealing that she'd become like a Commoner in the process. There were just so many levels on which that part of her life was wrong. It was definitely something that she'd prefer to forget, if at all possible. Which meant that it was not something she wished to share with anybody—ever, especially not Henrietta. "He, ah—I, my horse . . . I tripped over his body!" she finally forced out. "And, well, I might have maybe interrogated a passing Commoner."

"Just a passerby?" Henrietta asked incredulously.

"Henrietta, you must know that well, yes, he was a random passerby, technically." Not quite, but she was trying to keep that a secret. "But, technically speaking, so was everybody else on the street. And that was why I tripped over the man! All of the people on the street were complete strangers, and yet they all acted as if there was no body there! I tripped over him because I didn't see him 'till he was underfoot. The crowd parted 'round him without looking to see the dead man in their midst." A wonderful improvisation, if Louise had to say so herself.

"So, you're implying that because people acted indifferently to a dead man in the slums, there exists a conspiracy amongst my countrymen to systematically eliminate foreign political dissenters."

"Yes, more or less," Louise answered proudly, the disbelief in Henrietta's voice completely lost to her.

"I'm afraid that that's just not enough, Louise," Henrietta said sadly, in so bringing to reality what Louise had yet to comprehend.

"I don't follow."

"The connection, it's just too much, my friend. The people, especially the destitute and homeless, they die in the streets every day. The watch comes and picks them up at the end of the day, before nightfall though—it's much too dangerous then. They're stripped naked of anything they might have owned before they come around, though. Every time. Muggers and cutthroats, footpads and strongarms; murder happens every day in the slums of any city. The people don't care, Louise. Not anymore, they're desensitized to it, it's a mundane thing to them."

"But—" she started.

"But for nothing. It's just too much of a stretch, Louise Françoise. I can't take that risk with my kingdom, there's too much at stake if you're wrong." Things were quiet as Henrietta let it sink in, but she wasn't beloved by the people for no reason. She gave Louise an out, another chance. "Is that really all that you have for me? No other, more substantial proof?"

Another chance, but at what cost? Louise would be forced to divulge her secret. And she was invested in lying already, she didn't want to reveal that she'd lied to her friend, she might never forgive her! Or would she . . . ? No! Louise would never stoop so low! But what to say? She'd rushed back to the Academy after learning what she'd just told Henrietta—it was literally all she knew. She figured that, as a last resort, since things seemed to be coming to it, she might reveal her subversion of truth. It was better to get it over with than to fail her future Queen, no, to fail her friend who happened to be Royalty. With new resolve, she opened her mouth to speak, only to nearly bite her tongue off when it was instead C.C. who spoke.

"Louise failed no one," her Familiar said. Truthfully speaking, she'd forgotten that her Familiars were even there. They'd been unnaturally quiet as of yet. But the change was not unwelcome, for once. C.C. was speaking out of turn, but Louise was far too relieved to care.

"Elaborate," Princess Henrietta said sternly. She'd switched to her sovereign voice, the tone that said 'I'm in charge. Obey.' She was now Her Royal Highness, Princess Henrietta de Tristain, Guardian of the Northern Lily and Heiress Apparent to the Asphodel Throne. Louise was glad that that tone wasn't aimed at her, for it brooked no argument and stood ready to capriciously judge everything it heard, putting a chill down her spine. L.L. and C.C. didn't mind, though. Her Familiars might be the only people she'd ever witnessed to be unfazed by Henrietta's commanding voice. But really, they were they only people that she thought with which that might have even been a possibility.

"There's more to the story than that!" C.C. went on passionately. Louise could only imagine what that could be. Unless . . . she wouldn't! Unless she was going to say what Louise had purposely avoided. She'd best not!

L.L. nodded before picking up for her, "Whilst our Master was investigating, she dispatched us to do much the same. The search had been going for days by the time she stumbled upon the dissenter's body. We had much more luck than she did, however."

The Princess turned to look at Louise once more after hearing this. "That 'power' that you spoke of? The skill of knowing? That's what they speak of?" she asked.

It wasn't, but Louise wouldn't be saying that. "Y-yes, that's it! We spent many days collecting information, and sifting through it," she answered nervously.

"Then I suppose that I really can't question it," Henrietta sighed. "I still don't wish to know badly enough to ask, and as I already know just how well it works . . ." She gained a pensive look, she was obviously conflicted. It seemed that the candle might gutter out before she came to a decision, when at last Henrietta refocused her eyes—a task made difficult by the waning candlelight. "I suppose it can't be helped, I'll have to put my faith in you and your Familiars, Louise."

"You won't regret this, Princess!" Louise chirped, her smile returned.

"We can only hope," Henrietta whispered. "Well then! What can I give you for your success?"

"Give? No, no. There's no need!"

"Louise, please, I insist," she said sternly, a bit of her authority leaking through. Just enough, though, that Louise knew she wouldn't be able to say no.

"Well . . . maybe I'd like—" she began. She didn't know what to say. She didn't want anything, she'd just done her duty and helped her friend.

"She'd like access to the Royal Libraries," C.C. cut in. Louise certainly had no wish for something so frivolous! But, Royal access did imply Royal support, which could definitely be useful. How? Louise had no real idea. But it wasn't such a terrible idea, on second thought.

"Done," Henrietta said, "I'll have it decreed within an hour of my return to Tristainia, I can rush the badge and get it here within the week."

"Th-thanks then," Louise said.

"But what about you, Familiars? I certainly can't forget those that help my friend."

Her Familiars certainly had none of the difficulties in asking that she'd had. "Is Iona your Familiar?" L.L. questioned flatly. That was surprising, if Louise had forgotten her Familiars then, comparatively, she'd never even registered the maid, so little attention had she paid to the Commoner girl. But for her to be a Familiar? That was such a silly question!

No answer was forthcoming, and Henrietta's face contorted in a wicked grin that scared Louise. She stared hard at her, her gaze unwavering; it was made to sway and drift with the light, but Louise knew that that was just a trick.

Henrietta's grin widened malevolently, and then suddenly she, along with the maid, fell into a fit of mad laughter.

"Ah ahah, ahaha! Oh! Louise! And, and—bahahaha!" Louise wished to know what was so terribly humorous about her Familiar's dumb question, but really she found the laughter to be a bit intimidating, so she kept quiet. Things would solve themselves. Hopefully. That was her current mantra.

"Aha . . . ah . . . s-sorry about that Louise, but that was just so utterly—hahawaawaha!" This continued for some time, but eventually she calmed herself enough to answer. "Ah, I needed that." She sighed. "Well then, I'm sorry to inform you, Mister Familiar, that Iona does not share your occupation. She's just my Maiden of Honor, nothing so lofty as a Familiar."

"Ah, pooh," C.C. said, monotone once more intact.

"Felicitations," L.L. hummed.

"M-m-m-Maiden of Honor!" Louise shrieked, incredulously looking back and forth between the Princess and the maid. _"You're to be wed?!"_

"Why . . . yes," Henrietta admitted sheepishly. "I—that was supposed to be a secret . . ."

"W-well, congratulations are in order then! When did he ask? What did he say? Oh, you must tell me everything! What was he wearing? What kind of ring did he give you?" Louise interrogated her engaged friend.

"Louise—" Henrietta attempted to interject, but Louise ignored her in her fervor, instead asking a question that breached the root of the topic.

"Did Prince Tudor get on his knee? Please tell! I bet he did, you two were always so romantic."

"Louise! Don't you see? It wasn't Wales! I went to Vindobona to seek an alliance, and this is what they offered!" There were tears forming at the edge of the Princess' eyes, and her face was flushed with trouble and doubt.

Louise was speechless for a bit, and she wished that her Familiars or Iona would say something, but nothing beyond Henrietta's quiet sobs and the creaking of the wind over the tower could be heard for several minutes.

"So, then you'd be Germania's Queen-Consort?" Louise asked, almost wistful.

"I suppose so," Henrietta said as she produced a handkerchief and used it to wipe her face. "I don't think it's so terrible. Vindobona's not such a terrible capital city; perhaps I might study at their Magic Academy, I heard good word of it whilst visiting."

"Are you certain that this is really necessary? Can't we go to Gallia? Or Romalia, even? Don't you love Prince Wales? Surely you mustn't join some loveless political marriage . . ." After all, wasn't that what Louise was avoiding? And yet her friend, whom she'd always adored—even envied, just a tad—would be forced to suffer the selfsame fate? That was just . . . tragically unthinkable for her.

"No, no. I think not. Thank you very much for your concern, Louise Françoise, but I've weighed my options already; this is the best that could be made of our dismal situation in so little time. I do care for Wales very much, but the needs of the State come before my own."

"Then . . . would you hold it against me if I used that Royal Access Badge to help you?" After all, if the Princess was set, then the least Louies could do for her friend was help her marriage go smoothly. Maybe it would hurt less that way.

Henrietta seemed reluctant to accept. "Are you sure about that? I would appreciate that ever so much . . . but the things that I need help with are not simple."

"Yes, of course, please do. I'm Louise Françoise, Royal Informant; at your service, milady," Louise said formally, bowing as eloquently as a wooden bench in a dusty abandoned library would allow. It was all rather difficult, but the act drew a tiny giggle from her friend, so it was worth it.

"Well, fine then, Royal Informant Louise Françoise. I now assign you your second mission."

"Second?"

"You didn't expect to perform a labour for the Crown without proper compensation, did you? You'll be paid for your efforts in Tristainia, as well as all consequential missions." Louise was about to protest when Henrietta gave her a look that said 'let me enjoy my job for once', so she remained silent. "Your second of which will be very dangerous. I've been meaning to send my body, Griffon Knight Wardes, on this mission, so you shall accompany him. I believe you've met," she teased.

"Ah, Wardes . . . It's been a while . . ."

"Plenty of time to catch up, then. I'll be sending him to fetch you within the week, so be prepared." The Princess paused in thought. "I feel that I have forgotten something . . . Ah! Yes, the mission, the mission! You're to accompany Sir Wardes in retrieving a rather . . . intimate correspondence that I sent to Wales some time ago, before all this trouble started, when being adults was but an option. Things are different now, however, and I fear that the letter might fall into the wrong hands."

"Are you saying that Wales might die?! Certainly that would be the only way he would give it up!" Which would make retrieving it from him if he yet lived all the more difficult. "And, wrong hands? What would anybody want with a love letter?"

L.L. spoke plainly, saying, "A love letter is a powerful weapon if one seeks to destroy a recent engagement. And if you are to take it from him to prevent this, then he will surely die." That explained much. Her Familiars had such odd ways, but they could be so utterly, crushingly blunt at times.

"_Oh,_" was all she managed.

"'Oh' is correct, thought I'd like to know how your Familiar knows that information, Louise," Henrietta said suspiciously, but despite her desire to know as well, Louise could only shrug.

"It's just their power. They know things."

"Well, let's hope that that works in your favour on your upcoming mission. But alas, it's time that I must go. I told Mazarin that this would be much quicker than it ended up taking." Henrietta waved, and her Maid picked up the nearly guttered candle and replaced it with a new one to better light their way out. Louise realized that she'd been doing that for some time when they exited the tower and it was nearly dark out, she'd just never noticed.

Henrietta dispelled her illusions as she rushed to a small carriage under the cover of the deepening shadows, Iona as her coattails. "Bye, Louise! L.L., C.C.! Take care, best of luck! Thank you, again!" she called before climbing in and closing the door. The carriage rumbled out from its hiding spot and headed on its merry way towards Tristainia, the moonlights just beginning to glint off of it.

Louise's stomach grumbled loudly.

"Well, then . . . off to the kitchens for a late dinner, I suppose," C.C. said sweetly.

* * *

The badge came three days later, accompanied by a letter that read:

_By Royal Decree, the recipient of this badge, one Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, is conferred the Royal Title of 'Knight Scholar' for acts of Bravery and Loyalty and is charged with the duty of furthering the State of Tristain and its endeavors, particularly those pertaining to knowledge and information, through any necessary means._

_Hereafter, Her Royal Highness' Knight Scholar Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière shall have unlimited access to the Royal Archive and Library up to and including the third level, with permission to request texts from the second level._

_All non-Royal Archives and/or Libraries or persons within the State and its holdings shall give Her Royal Highness' Knight Scholar Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière unlimited access to all texts, and to do otherwise without Royal Permission is hereafter considered High Treason._

_Signé,_  
_S.A.R_  
_Princesse Henrietta de Tristain,_  
_gardienne du Lys du nord,_  
_et princesse héréditaire du trône de l'Asphodèle_

Lelouch had to wait until after Louise had finished reading it before seeing it himself; the slow smile that had spread across her face as she read had made him nearly impatient. After seeing it, he could understand her smile. Or, more exactly, he could better understand it. He already knew what kind of power came with that sort of decree, that was why he'd brought the thought up with C.C. in the first place.

The badge itself was an enameled clip meant to be worn on the lapels, featuring a white knight rampant against a field of purple. The knight held both his sword wand and a Brimiric Holy Book, and he was mounted atop a griffon, giving the thing a very Halkeginian feel to it. Emblazoned upon his saddle and chest plate were the Tristainian Royal Arms, a fleur-de-lis, and atop his helm he wore the Tristainian Royal Crest, a White Asphodel; both further distinguishing him from anything within Lelouch's vast experience.

It was certainly unique, and it was certainly noticeable, but that was why they'd told her to take it off. There was no use in being a Royal secret agent if everybody and their mother knew about it. That didn't stop her from telling Kirche and Tabitha, but he didn't think there would have been a way to keep those two in the dark on the whole 'in with the monarchy' thing, anyways. Louise couldn't keep secrets particularly well. Neither could Princess Henrietta, for a fact—her rekindled relationship with his Little Master would surely become popular knowledge if she didn't stop dropping by the Academy.

From the little slumber party his Master had held the night after receiving her letter and badge, which she'd opted to keep tucked away in a little oilskin pouch, they learned that Tabitha was actually a knight for the Gallian Crown, though she refused to reveal her title. They also learned that Kirche had been kicked out of the Academy in Vindobona for misconduct, but they were able to infer what that meant when she refused to elaborate—she was Kirche the Ardent, after all.

Friends with Louise that they now were, Kirche and Tabitha, but mostly Kirche, had demanded that they be allowed to come with her. It was clearly written on her face that her heart wasn't in it, but Louise still rejected them, insisting that it was her duty to be the only one besides Viscount Wardes, and most definitely not theirs. The State said that she must go alone. The fact that she wouldn't be alone, that she would be dragging her Familiars along, was left unsaid. As far as the State was concerned, they weren't people so much as puppet-like extensions of their Master's will. The State was frequently wrong, as they rarely performed any act that resembled obedience, but they didn't care enough to inform it. From the look that his Master's friends had shared, it looked as if the State would be wrong again, but C.C. had demanded that he let the girls have their secret, so his Master would likely be in for a surprise later.

Later would likely be sometime soon, Lelouch thought, as only two days later Viscount Jean-Jacques de Wardes arrived astride his own griffon and attempted to sweep their Little Master from her feet. From behind, no less. He learned that that was not such an intelligent move when she kneed him in the crotch. It was an accident, of course; just a dull reflex she'd picked up in the slums, but it was enough, the traumatized man was unlikely to ever forget.

"Ah, cha—oh, ffaa—! It—it's n-nice to see you again, too, Louise," the poor man forced out between gasps. He was nearly doubled over, which was a good thing in Lelouch's book. That meant that Louise's technique was effective. If only Wardes could appreciate that.

'Meh, I give it six points,' C.C. offered.

'Agreed.' It wasn't a spectacular hit, but Louise was new to the crotch-kneeling arts, so it would do.

"Viscount! I don't know what to say," Louise said nervously. "I-I'm sorry, I guess . . ." she trailed off.

"Think nothing of it, 'tis but a flesh wound," he replied twice as nervously, though he quietly distanced himself as he struggled to stand erect once more. He tipped his feathered hat and smoothed his beard before continuing. "I'll be fine, within a matter of time. It's you I've come to see! Now then, you must tell me, how have you been, my Louise?"

Louise blushed brightly, which was not a common thing. At least not when she was apart from Kirche and Tabitha. "S-so forward? It was arranged, Viscount," she murmured.

"Thoroughly riveting as this is, haven't we a mission?" Lelouch questioned, interrupting the sickeningly sweet atmosphere and causing his Master to jump.

"Hmm? And they would be . . ." Wardes, with a vaguely confused expression plastered across his handsome face, prompted. The Viscount wasn't as handsome as he was, Lelouch thought smugly—the Academy staff didn't chase after him, or have a secret appreciation club for him.

"They are—" she started, but he interrupted her yet again. That drove away the last of her blush, replacing it with a much more natural look: confounded anger.

This was becoming most wearisome, he thought. "I am L.L."

'Conceited Demon.'

"And I'm C.C."

'Boorish Witch.'

"We are her Familiars."

"Ah, that explains much, then. I've heard very little about you from Her Highness, but what she has said has been . . . somewhat positive. She holds you in, high—no, good—no, not that either . . . She holds you in regards of some sort, but I can't rightly tell what kind. Be that as it may, I look forward to working with the both of you."

"Be sure to form your own opinions of us, then," Lelouch replied cordially as he took the Viscount's proffered hand. His grip was a bit tight, but not uncouthly so. Viscount Wardes was not a man to be taken lightly.

"I'll do that," Wardes said as he released Lelouch's hand and smiled a bit too much. "Well, I'm afraid that the man was right. Come, my Little Louise, we must depart!" he said jovially as he swept her off of her feet and, despite her red-faced protests, sat her in his griffon, and took wing. Nary a thought to the Familiars!

"And he didn't offer me his hand! Never mind that I would have turned it down; tact is a dying trait, I'd swear," C.C. complained.

"Aye, C.C. But we can't all be knights, never mind that he was a knight," he quipped. They mounted their horses and took the road south, chasing after the griffon.

* * *

Tim discovered the meaning of fire. Fire meant warmth and security. Fire kept the bugs and animals away at night. Tim hated fire.

It kept the nasties away from him, but it was really hard to make. He was getting better at it! But his hands were covered in blisters and small burns. It was a difficult trade-off, risking death or spending hours struggling to make and maintain a fire, but he thought that he'd made the right choice. Miss Tifa would be proud.

Miss Tifa . . . Looking back, Tim knew that it wasn't his fault—there was no way he could have prevented what happened. It still sucked, though.

He was learning that a lot of the things in life sucked. Or 'fucked'. Now that he was alone, he liked to use big people words like that every so often. It felt good. Maybe he didn't quite know how to use them properly, but it still felt good. They made him feel a bit stronger.

There'd been a bear cub a . . . week? Maybe two? It was hard to tell time sometimes. But there'd been a bear cub one night some time ago, and he'd fought it off.

"Fuck you!" he'd screamed at it as he chased it away with his fire. It was liberating, playing with fire.

He was safe now. Tim could probably live in the woods forever, just him and his fire. But he missed Miss Tifa, even if she always told him to stay away from fire. He missed the orphanage and his parents and having other kids to play with and books to read.

Tim discovered the meaning of fire. Fire meant loneliness and hard work. Fire barely kept the chill at bay at night. Tim hated fire.

* * *

Mathilda was cloaked in her Fouquet getup, which was little more than a tattered hooded cloak, really. Cromwell told her that she would need it for her next assignment, so she put it on, not really thinking. She didn't really think too much since she started being sorry, though thoughts were popping up with more frequency lately. She'd think back to times when she was just Miss Mathilda, who cared for the orphans with her half-sister. Or, occasionally, she'd think back even further, to when she was still a spoiled noble girl and the cloak was still new.

That didn't in any way mean that she was any less apologetic than when she'd started being apologetic, but it might have maybe meant that she had grown accustomed to it. People could get used to anything, and really, you could only devote so much thought to one thing before it becomes second nature and you can think of something else entirely whilst still thinking those routine thoughts. So Fouquet cried and said she was at fault. And on the surface, that was all that happened. But what Fouquet truly lived for the sub-surface, where she was still Mathilda, where her fantasies and memories and thoughts lay dormant to the world. All that did, however, mean that there was a Fouquet, and then there was a Mathilda. And that perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that Fouquet put on her Fouquet getup because she was ordered to, and Mathilda hated Cromwell for that. But Mathilda was sorry, so it was easier to be Fouquet, who had actually done things to be sorry about. That was her theory, at the least, and it was admittedly a working one, but it was the only way that she could fathom that remotely explained her situation. Whatever her explanation, it wasn't all that important at the moment, as the focus was on Fouquet.

So Fouquet was in her tattered hooded cloak, for which she'd apologized that it was no longer as pretty as it once had been, and she was off to find some thugs. They were to beat up some little girl, which was sad, but it would be dangerous, and that was sad too. Nonethematter, she had work to do, and it would be even sadder if she didn't get that done. Lord Cromwell had told her that she might face difficulties in recruiting these ruffians, so he'd suggested—and quiet harshly—that she be forceful with them, and that she should leave the apologetics for after all was said and done. She'd been against that, but she was sorry for being against it as well, and in that time of confusion Mathilda'd influenced her to follow Cromwell's orders and save as much of her vestigial face as possible. It was all so very depressing, but she'd have plenty of time to cry and less to cry about if she succeeded.

She apologized quietly to the drunk man she had to push over—he'd been blocking the entrance—before stepping into the dingy bar. The 'Golden Wine Barrel Bar,' as the sign read, was an ill reputed place full of ruffians and returning mercenaries and soldiers. Not to be confused with a house of ill repute, which could be found across the street. Certainly many of the drunken patrons frequented the other establishment, but Fouquet had no interest in women unless they were drunken mercenaries, and the only drunken mercenaries she'd find at 'Le Petite Mort' would have been too busy to bother. So, even though the large whorehouse had many more drunken men the tiny bar she was entering, she hadn't chosen it, as most of them would be drunken commoners, not drunken mercenaries. Cromwell wanted people that would fight for his money, not untrained idealistic fools that would fight for his easily abandoned cause. And she would find them in spades in Golden Wine Barrel Bar.

"The king of Albion is finished!"

"Don't that means that they're going to start a republic soon?"

"If so, let us offer a toast to the republic!"

The people offering toasts to themselves were formerly mercenaries hired by the royalist to fight alongside them. However, faced with the imminent defeat of their clients, they'd all decided to retreat. That wasn't frowned upon, as they were naught but mercenaries—any who dealt with them knew that they had a price they would work for, and a price they wouldn't pay. Cromwell knew that. He still wanted them, though. She sucked down as much of her persisting sadness as she could and tried to be as much of Mathilda as could be managed before speaking, quietly ordering some food and drink. When her meal arrived she made sure to compensate for having the gall to order someone by paying far more than was necessary, as recompense for the fact that she wasn't verbally apologizing at the moment.

The waiter boy, garçons they called them there, looked down at the large sum with bewildered eyes. "That . . . That's a lot of money. Is it really alright?" he asked, his eyes flashing back and forth between her hands and trying to peek up her hood.

"Yes, yes. Think of it as extra for the good service, garçon." She cringed a bit at the title and attempted to remind herself that it wasn't nearly so offensive when one was speaking Gallian. Or any language other than Tristainian, really. She pushed down the desire to apologize with the logic that doing so would only befuddle the Gallian boy, so she just smiled and nodded her head. He understood the gesture well enough and made off, no doubt to hide his bonus earnings before whatever waiting guild he belonged to demanded a tithe. Too bad he wasn't the only one to notice she had a bit too much money to be there. Or maybe not, considering her mission.

"Excuse me miss, it's dangerous for you to be here alone," said a burly man with a lopsided smile filled with crooked teeth. "That's right, there's lotsa shady characters 'round these parts. Don't worry though, we're 'ere to protect you now." A glance from her meal confirmed that more than one drunkard had followed the spokesman, who was the largest man she'd even born witness to; the girth of his gut nearly equaled his height. Short, bald. Charismatic when he wasn't so deep into the drink, she presumed. He had all the trappings of a head mercenary. But by the way he was eyeing her, his price was too high. She wouldn't be giving herself to the man. She had no particular qualms with doing so, and it would relieve a bit of her guilt that she would deny a man his desires, but Cromwell demanded that no one else touch her. The fog of her penitence made her thoughts unclear, she had difficulty figuring out how she would respond to the man, but he knew what he wanted and how to get it. He advanced and made blatant his advance.

"I'd like ta protect ya for the night, if'n ya catch my meanin'." She sat still, at a loss for words. She just hoped he'd have gone away by the next time she looked up. But he wasn't he was ever the closer and closing yet. She began to tremble as he got within reaching distance, but she felt secure after she produced her wand from her old cloak. She gripped it for dear life, hoping that the man would go away and realize that his desires would not be met that day. She knew she'd apologize if he did that, and then hopefully things could go smoothly from there. He had other plans, but they would end the same just as well.

"Now . . . hey there, lass. Don't be makin' any trouble with us. We just got needs, well as any other man," he said a bit shakily. He obviously didn't know what to make of her brandishing a wand, but his indecisiveness quickly passed—likely he was able to reassure himself that she was playing noble girl. But she wasn't. He moved a bit more firmly, tugging up her hood as he said, "Come now, girly. No need for that. We'll take good care'a ya," obviously trying to placate a skittish whore. Mathilda found it all very offensive, but she knew better than to say so at such a delicate time. "Now come along with—" he began. He stopped when he could see her face. "By the Founder . . ."

"What'sit?!" one thug in the crowd asked.

"What's gotcha?" Another.

"Oh, my . . ." A glimpse.

"A special girl, then, isn't she?" the others all voiced similar thoughts.

The captain removed his hand, letting the hood fall, to hang down her back. He stepped away, revealing her tear streaked face to the rest of his company. "You're Fouquet the Crumbing Resolve, then?" he asked. But he already knew, and so he became wary of her wand. Crumbling Resolve or not, she was a Mage with a wand, and he was still a Commoner.

The others grew quiet as their tiny captain spoke again. Charismatic indeed. "What are you doing on this side of town, then, mi'lady?" That was the question, wasn't it?

She wiped her face dry. "I am in need of hired hands, mercenaries. That would be you?"

"Well . . . we prefer 'sell-swords', but that's beyond the point. I take it you have the necessary funds?" He'd become brusque, businesslike, which made sense, as being a 'sell-sword' was his business. And business had just become very good.

"Of course, of course, the money." She pulled out her, well it was really Cromwell's, purse. "Here, I think this should do, at least for what my Master wants." Maybe it wasn't quite enough, but it was all he'd given her. And then some of her own on top.

The captain eyed her suspiciously. "This is quite a bit more than what we charge," he said. "Just how dangerous is this job . . . ?"

"Not at all!" she tried to placate the man. "It's nothing more than a child noble, really. Just hit and run." That was terrible. She would have to apologize to the little girl afterwards. He didn't seem convinced, but there was relief: she saw the door open. "I, well, I don't really know the details . . . Why don't you ask my Master?" she said bashfully, pointing to the masked man that had just entered the bar.

"Yes," he said, adjusting the mask, "I'll take care of your needs. Come along, then; there's work that needs to be done, plans that need to be made."

"Straightforward man, isn't he?" she heard the captain mumble gruffly.

"Don't say it so unkindly, he'd throw a fit," she whispered harshly.

"Well, he can bring that up with me, then. Or he can bite me bum, for all I care!" the stocky man shouted. It made her giggle.

"Let it be our secret, then, captain . . ."

"Janick, Captain Janick. And I do believe you are the famous Miss Mathilda." Of course he'd heard of her. How spectacular 'twas her failure; how spectacular 'twas her fall. She was a popular song, and with that she remembered who she was. And she was terribly sorry about failing.

"Yes, that would be me, Mister Captain Janick, sir." She turned away and hurried out. They needed to catch up with her Master; there was work to be done.

ODD#I(e)/5,iii;60Bcy3178

AN:

Well this took far too long. It's not even particularly long. Oh well.

Hooray for Charlie Brown teacher voices!

Pulled the name Iona out of my ass whilst writing. I googled it, and apparently it's significant to Scottish Christianity. I kept it because I thought it was a pretty name, so sorry if it offended anyone—I don't actually know enough about Christianity to know, so don't be afraid to message me if it's considered improper.

So I considered using this in the letter:  
_Signé,_  
_S.A.R._  
_Princesse Henrietta de Tristain,_  
_gardien du lys du nord,_  
_et princesse héréditaire de trône de l'Asphodèle._  
But I was very uncomfortable with my translation, so I decided against it, as I didn't feel like risking embarrassing myself in front of any francophone readers. However, you're free to imagine that I'd used it instead of the English version if you'd like, I guess. Or laugh at the poor anglophone, if it's incorrect. Either or neither, really. Hopefully not both.

Nonethematter is apparently not one word, but I like it, so I'm keeping it. It looks pretty, and it's intuitive.

Janick, as in Janick Gers. I'm not terribly clever with names. It's pronounced 'Yanick', if you didn't know.

Oh, yeah, there's a one shot up. Barely related to this, if you squint, but it does kind of tease a tiny bit, if you look hard enough.

Edit: Fixed the bit where I called Wales Wardes ( thank you again, firelordozaie )  
I also replaced the English signing of the letter with Judge Dead's traduction, so another big thank you to him as well.


	5. Drunken Lullabies

**Everything I Touch**

_Chapter 5_

_Drunken Lullabies_

Louise huffed again. Viscount Wardes had called her huffing 'cute', of all things, but she couldn't have cared less. She was upset with the juvenile way he treated her; she was a woman fully grown! And yet he insisted that she was still, and would always be, for the matter, 'small and dainty'. Like a child! And Louise knew that she was no child. It wasn't like she threw tantrums anymore. But the Viscount—she refused to call him Jean, or even Jean-Jacques if he couldn't treat her as an adult—saw her as such, and that irked Louise to high hell. So she huffed, just to spite him, and sat as far from him as was for the moment possible. Roughly an arm's length, really, but that was the best that could be expected whilst griffonback riding.

Speaking of griffonback riding, it was exhilarating. The view was simply marvelous. Louise had never had the chance to ride one before, what with being a female, but it was truly an experience. She felt the wind blow across her face before it tumbled through her strawberry blonde locks, whipping them to and fro, making it seem as if she was trailed by a wild pinkish flame. The beast itself looked much like the one depicted on her badge, though it didn't entirely meet her expectations. But that was a comparison drawn between real life and artwork. It was to be expected that the art would be more beautiful—that was its purpose, but the real thing more than made up for it's lack of physical beauty with the majesty it displayed in flight. They soared through the air atop the winged beast, higher than the highest mountains for a thousand leagues, and Louise felt that she understood what it would be like to be as free as the breezes that stirred her tresses.

"Enjoying the view?" the Viscount teased her, snapping her out of her musings and reminding her that she was supposed to be all huffy and upset.

"Maybe," she grumbled, chewing her lip and purposely not looking at the man. She might have been forgiven for kneeling him, but she would not be so forgiving for his treating her like a child.

"Oh, come now! Surely you must relent!" he pleaded.

"Nuh-uh!" He'd been pleading for some time, she saw no reason why she should change her mind and talk to him.

"Pretty please? I'll stop teasing, I swear!"

"Uh-uh!" That wouldn't be enough! It might have been a good start, she thought, but she wanted more than that.

"Not even for that? Then how about if I admit that you are no longer so young?" That might do! That would have been a terribly rude comment if directed towards a lady any older than Louise, but it was enough for her.

"Fine . . ." she said, finally giving in. Her answer elicited a relieved sigh from the man. "But I'm still not using your first name." And that elicited another, but he no longer cared enough to argue the point, it seemed. That was fine by her, however, as with the matter decided, she could return to enjoying the view.

"Wonderful, isn't it?" he said as he joined her countryside gazing; the griffon knew the way, and could fly itself. She gave a quiet 'hnn' in response as she watched another town flash by. It all reminded her that they were leaving the country, which she had never done before. She'd certainly been taught Gallian, as a noble daughter was expected to know all of the major languages. She could speak fluently with a man from any of the Brimiric nations, and she also knew enough of Germanian to hold a casual conversation. As for the language of the Elves, she knew only a handful of words and phrases, most of them consisting of racial slurs; Elves where not well liked, and they felt the same towards the race of Man. But she wasn't going on a trip to the Elven Lands—she didn't have a death wish, nor was she stupid. No, she was going to Gallia, largest of all the Brimiric nations.

Gallia . . . Tabitha's home country. She didn't speak of it, so Louise assumed that her memories of home weren't particularly fond. Louise certainly understood that—she didn't particularly miss the la Vallière estates—her memories of home were full of not-quite-met expectations hidden behind too-kind smiles. Louise did look forward to returning when she at last met those expectations, so she wondered if Tabitha might like to return home. "Tabby . . ." she mumbled, lost in thought.

"What was that?" the Viscount asked.

"Huh? Oh, nothing. Say, Wardes, how have the years treated you? It has been some time."

"Not unkind, as of late. Certainly the worst years where those immediately following my father's passing, when I was still a lad with more courage than sense. But you already know of that time, unless you've forgotten?"

"No, no, of course not. You rarely visited your home, so busy were you with training and the like." The Wardes family were minor nobility that had been granted a parcel of land on the la Vallière estate.

"Yet I always made certain that I visited you when I was home."

"That you did," she admitted with a slight blush. He'd always been kind to her.

"And you know my intentions." There was no question. She'd remembered, and it seemed that he'd never forgotten; they were betrothed. That was a pretty silly thing to forget, she thought, but forget it she had. He'd once told her he'd make a name for himself and become the husband that she 'deserved'. And he'd gone and done it, too. He was Head Captain of the Griffon knights—no small feat, by any means. But Louise didn't know what to make of that. She certainly _used_ to like the man, and in a childish way, she still did. But she was unsure about it all, so she was glad when he seemed to be able to read that from her uncomfortable posture and so choose to remain silent on the subject. She'd spent her entire life attempting to outrun marriage, and she still didn't want to contemplate it at the time.

"There's always more to life than that, though," he said, breaking the awkward silence. "So tell me about these Familiars of yours. What are they like? I've heard what Her Highness has had to say of them, but what of your opinion?"

That drew a contemptuous snort from her. "Huh, they're Familiars. Not sure what to make of them, really. They won't tell me about themselves, won't show me their Runes," the last bit drew a reaction from the Viscount, but he settled down to continue listening to her, "they don't do anything particularly helpful, they know too much," that drew an odd look from him too, but she disregarded it, "and they generally get in the way of everything."

Wardes whistled appreciatively. "Quite the list you have there."

"Thank you, I try."

"So I take it that you hate them?" he asked.

"Hate them? Of c—" she stopped mid-sentence to reevaluate what she was about to say. "I don't rightly know anymore. I don't think I do, though. By all rights, I should, but they are difficult to hate. It's not particularly easy to even form an opinion on them, with how little I know of them, but I think not," she decided.

"Oh? What would you call them, then?"

"They are . . . familiar," she answered thoughtfully. "Hnn, how very trite that must sound: familiar Familiars. And yet it is all that I can think of. Perhaps enigmatic, as well. They are a familiar enigma."

"A? Not enigmas?"

"Yes. They're not terribly different from a long married couple, or a highly trained military unit, or something similar. Terrifyingly coordinated; in perfect sync."

Wardes was silent, and she feared that she'd overwhelmed the man. But at last he stirred. "How very interesting," he drawled at length as he spun about to take the griffon's reigns. "Very interesting."

* * *

C.C. sighed as she dismounted for the day. Lelouch finally caught up to her and did much the same. They were tired. Tired of horseback, tired of the monotony of just each other's company, tired because they'd yet to get any rest. She'd been irritably bickering with him for nearly an hour when he pointed out that the griffon they were following landed in a distant clearing, but she'd made a joyful mad dash to the scene immediately after.

"My ass hurts," she bit at him abrasively. He chose not to dignify the cheap bate with a response. There were too many ways that he could have exploited what she'd just told him for it to be a legitimate thought.

Their little Master heard it, however, it seemed. She certainly turned red enough. The obstinate refusal to look at her female Familiar was another immediate tell, but at least she tried.

Louise apparently forced the Viscount to stop for the night for her Familiars' sakes. Wardes had chosen to land near a stream, on a small hill with a withered tree on it where the moons felt closer and larger than normal. It really was a rather idyllic place to turn in for the night; it seemed that it would be a night of campfires.

Sir Knight Captain Viscount Jean-Jacques de Wardes considered himself a competent man with ambitions and dreams. He'd promised Louise that he would become the husband she deserved, and he had. If he'd perhaps lost track of his goal of being a husband a bit, and had been consumed by his ambition, well that was no one's fault but his own. But he was a competent man, so he would at least own up to that fact. Competent as he was, he found himself tested by his fiancée's Familiars. They were no less enigmatic to him than they were to anybody else, and yet solving that enigma was an integral part of his mission. And he didn't even have the comfort of being familiar with the Familiars. That was one of the reasons he'd acquiesced to Louise's silly request that he land for the night, but he hardly saw how it mattered so long as they were at the designated checkpoint at the designated time, so he planned to use the night's activities to gain some insight into their trailing enigma.

As the Familiars came into view, he busied himself with lighting a campfire with his flint. He was a powerful Mage, a Square, and so he had no need for fuel beyond his own willpower. He was a worldly man, and so he preferred that at least the initial lighting not be relegated to magic—it gave it all a more rustic feel, at least to him.

Louise sat down primly on the grass across the fire from him, cute as a button. He really didn't know why she took such great offence to the moniker 'cute', as it fit her terribly well. The Familiars sat on either side of his magical conflagration, creating a human box about it whilst proving to him that they didn't fear magic. That likely meant they weren't commoners. In his experience, commoners always failed the 'fuel-less flame test'.

"So . . ." Louise trailed off into the shattered silence, drawing all eyes to her. She squirmed under all of their gazes, and it looked as if she lost the will to speak. Silence returned, determined to stay, it seemed.

No one spoke; only the briefest of glances were shared. The night was quiet, but for the ambiance of nature. The wind stirred the tree's branches, the fire and the stream both gently burbled with hushed life, the griffon slept and the horses sated themselves on wild grasses. Quiet, calm, a tad relaxing—and a tad boring, it seemed, as at last someone spoke.

"Shall we tell you a tale?" Louise's male Familiar, L.L., said. Wardes didn't have anything against the idea—it was an opportunity to scrutinize. "Yes, I think so," he concluded when he was met with silence. Wardes leaned in to listen.

_"There once was a man who loved the world,_

_and his heart was cruel;_

_it beat with the vitality of a thousand suns, that cruel heart,_

_and to this rhythm the world moved._

_Chaos was his order,_

_and the elements were his to command;_

_the seasons bowed to his will,_

_and so too his subjects._

_He rode out on his steel chariot,_

_and brought the world to its knees;_

_he spearheaded the order,_

_and day and night his relentless heart echoed._

_The order was glorious,_

_and it covered all the land;_

_no one man could escape its reach,_

_but the common were his slaves._

_Painful was his extending rule,_

_and his world came to conflict with others;_

_most conflicted were the slaves,_

_and so they sought release._

_To the darkest place they knew,_

_outside the King's domain;_

_to the hidden places the world gathered,_

_to the fastness the dusk gathered._

_A swift current fed the slaves,_

_and they knew at once the tune;_

_in the face of harsh melody,_

_the King's cruel rhythm held nothing._

_The King felt his rhythm and the melody play together,_

_and so he smiled;_

_the melody was his composition,_

_and to his ear it complimented his rhythm._

_A violent clash of cacophony brought together the symbols of war,_

_and the ancient song played in counterpoint;_

_the enslaved knew their day,_

_and the King, his night._

_The great foe was bested by ethereal promises of melody,_

_and the freed knew their own rhythm;_

_they bathed in an unsullied spring,_

_and set the world ablaze._

_Great fires raged,_

_and the melody knew its master;_

_he was King of the fires themselves,_

_and his heat relentlessly echoed._

_Harsh melody, the people said,_

_was no more free than cruel staccato;_

_the fire's heat sweltered the world,_

_and its slaves felt within them his rhythm._

_Slave unto slave,_

_as King unto King;_

_the King's harsh melody was cut short,_

_and so he smiled._

_All was born anew,_

_to the tune of nature's quiet hum;_

_rechristened in a baptism of fire,_

_the King was born anew."_

C.C. had joined L.L. at some point, and Wardes felt himself sweat as the story heated his nerves. It was an ominous sort of tale—the kind told over an ale, not the kind told under the stars. But it was over, and Louise was asleep in C.C.'s lap. Wardes considered himself a competent man, but the familiar enigma was far more competent, it seemed.

* * *

The life of a Royal Princess was not all it was cracked up to be, Henrietta thought once again as she lay down for the night. Surrounded as she was by the frivolous luxuries that her station provided for, one would think that she was complacent. The Common folk, and certainly the Nobility, thought so. And yet it was not so. The highs and lows of any life were ever-present in hers, the fears, the joys, the responsibilities. But they were all just a bit off, just a bit twisted by her position. She could hold her friends however dear she wanted to, and yet they held themselves lower than her; she could look eye to eye with the common people, and yet they would hold her above themselves; and she could work a hard day, and yet she was still the Flower of Tristain. Perhaps she had less true strife in her life, but at least the Common man's strife was straightforward. A Commoner would never have to sacrifice himself with a smile unless he truly believed his cause, and yet that was what she had promised to do.

From her bed she espied Iona, with her ruddy complexion and dull red hair, and from her bed she loved Iona, with her dully bemused eyes and witty remarks. But all the same she hated the maid, the one who represented all that she would give up in the name of a country that loved her image more than it loved her. It wasn't Henrietta that they loved, but the too-perfect image that they'd crafted of her. She was indeed kind and loving of all, be they Noble or Common, but she was not perfect. The stiff corset she wore smoothed out her not-quite-perfect frame, the makeup she wore hid the light freckles that blemished her skin, and the Crown she wore hid the true personality that she craved to express. Princess Henrietta was the model of what a young woman should be, but Henrietta—just Henrietta—was a tomboyish girl with a wild heart that could not be tamed.

"You know who I am, don't you?" she asked the maid.

"Dark thoughts tonight Princess?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Hnn, well, yes. I know who you are. There are terribly few who don't, as a matter. But I do believe that that is not quite what you meant, now is it?"

Of course, leave it to her Maiden of Honor to point such a thing out. She would have to reword it if she wanted a proper answer. "Do you understand my true heart, then?"

"I believe so, Princess."

"And what is it like?"

"Passionate, wild maybe. Perhaps not unlike a caged bird, captured by its own family. Or perhaps not unlike a Princess during crisis. I'd prefer foregoing the metaphor, if possible."

"Oh?" She wasn't really interested, but she was polite.

"And you're angsty."

Now that was a bit rude, wasn't it? "Hnn? How so?"

"Don't play the fool. It will hurt more if you do. You know well as I that you don't want for this wedding. You're still hung up on Prince Tudor."

"And what if I am?! I'm seventeen, is that really too much to ask?"

"Yes, it is. You are seventeen. You're also a Crowned Princess. You chose the higher calling, now you must deal with the consequences."

Henrietta didn't quite know how to respond to that. On one hand, she could reject it, but then she would be lying to her people. On the other, she could accept it, but then she would be lying to herself. It was all a great big debacle, but she was Princess, so she could invent a third option: go to bed and pretend the whole thing didn't exist. It wasn't a particularly sage choice, but she no longer cared. She was Royalty, and she was addressing a maid. She could choose to stop responding at any moment she chose. So she did just that. Perhaps she would dream of Wales, she hoped.

* * *

Fouquet released her pent up breath in a heavy sigh as she finally finished tip-toeing out of Cromwell's tent. The man'd gotten himself stuck in the cups, and he'd almost fallen asleep on her in his drunken attempt to remove his own clothes. She said a quiet apology for something-or-another, and then she headed off into camp to find something to occupy her mind. Cromwell had insisted that his tent be separate from the compound that the sell-swords had set up. He hadn't been bothered to put it up for himself, so it was set up only a handful of yards away by the hired band, and so her travel was short.

As she entered the compound—nothing more than a ring of tents surrounding a fire, with their horses stabled to the other side—she ducked into the shadows thrown by the large bonfire the sell-swords had made. She would have been terribly upset if she'd bothered anybody, after all. Walking quietly, though not quietly enough to be sneaking, which would have set off her guilt, she slipped deeper in, until she was standing behind a tent flap that was just beyond the firelight. From her vantage point, she peeped in to watch the sell-swords' drunken partying. She felt sorry for peeping, but really, she felt just as sorry for the poor sot that had patrol duty. And for the hangovers the revelers would have come morning.

"Hey, you! Missus!" someone called, drawing her out of her thoughts. She'd walked out of her hiding spot when she was thinking, apparently.

"C'mere! 'Ave some beer!" he called again. She recognized the voice, it was Janick's. He was waving a mug at her invitingly. It was not what she'd wanted, per se, but it would have to do. He'd offered it, so she'd have to feel sorry if she turned the man down. But she'd wanted something to do, and the answer had presented itself. She could put off being sorry to the morning, with the rest of the hungover sell-swords, she decided.

"Yes, yes, I'm coming!" she answered as she started bridging the gap between them.

"So soon?!" he yelled at her incredulously, "I haven't even touched ya yet!" Aaaand she tripped, face forward, straight into the dirt. She scramble to sit up, and the stocky Captain gave her a hand back up. Her face flush; she could feel it.

"Ya should be more careful, lass. I an't gonna do anythin' so impolite—haven't even gotten you drunk yet!" he said loudly, clapping her on the back. She brushed the dirt off of her dress as she tried to fathom an answer.

"How very polite of you, sir," she eked out.

"Sir? I an't no damn Knight! Them frilly prissies playin' toy soldier for the Crown got nothin' on an honest sell-sword like myself."

"My utmost apologies then," she said, bowing to the man.

"Wha? Pick yer damn ass up, missy! I said I an't no damn Knight, I don't need that formal bullshit!" he told her thickly. He'd had a bit to drink, she guess. More than a bit. "Now c'mon! Let's get some damn beer over here for the Missus, laddie! Step to it!" he yelled at one of the younger of his band; a boy of perhaps eleven years.

"I said I was'a comin', damnit Cap'n!" he answered rudely, shocking her to no end. He ran up and nearly threw their mugs at them before bolting off to answer someone else's order, yelling all the way.

"Ah, don't mind the boy. Has a mouth like a sailor on him, but he's a good kid. He'll make a fine man someday, but 'till then he's the ass of the group. Tough life, an all that."

"Duly noted."

"Yeah . . . Well any-a'ways, let's drink!" He handed her one of the large wooden mugs. "Ta victory!" he cheered. The rest of his group joined him, and so did she, after a second. He struck out back to the fire, and she followed close at his heals.

"Now tell me lass, am I so ugly?" he asked. His question was echoed by several of his drunken comrades. She felt herself fluster again as she tried to answer the man.

"Well, I uh . . . well, you see . . .," she sputtered out, only to be met with roaring laughter from the crowd.

"Bahahahaha! That was'a good one, Mathi-miss!" he barked out. She ignored the nickname—he'd taken to calling her 'Mathi-miss' soon after they met, and she'd grown to like it.

"No? Ah, such is luck, then," he teased her. "Well, then, how's about a song or two, lads?! I know I can get her wit' me singin' voice!" They cheered, raising their mugs to the fire at their Captain's brilliant idea.

"Now come, Mathi-miss. This little ditty goes something like: 'I know the way, and I'll make it home again'," he sang an example line to her. His voice really wasn't so bad, given the amount of drink he'd consume. It had a sort of earthy warmth to it. "Try it, try it. No worries; this lot's too drunk to care," he urged her on.

"I know the way," she began to sing weakly. But Janick had been right, as the rest of them quickly picked up the tune.

_"I know the way, and I'll make it home again!_

_I've got a sweet lass with a great ass,_

_and I'll make it by with my hand 'till then!_

_I know the way, but the Cap'n's lost the map!_

_He's got no teeth, and great big teets,_

_but he can't tell tit for tat! _

_I know the way, and by hell that I'm free!_

_No King can keep me down with his silly Crown,_

_and he damn sure won't get me!_

_I know the way, and I'll make it home again!_

_But things are lookin' dark beyond the mark!_

_So warn me lass that if I don't last,_

_I'll love her to the end!"_

Mathilda felt herself get lost in the song, and when it ended she couldn't help but break into drunken laughter with the rest of the men. She was drunk and things were better for it. She wasn't sorry for a damn thing! Things would work out, and life could 'shove it up 'is ass if he didn't like it', as Janick told her.

Several drunken hours later, she looked at the man—passed out from the drink—and sloppily kissed him on his bald forehead before passing out herself. She could be sorry another time. Or maybe not, she thought. Life wasn't so bad this way.

* * *

"Aaaahhh! Shit! Aaaahhh!" Tim screamed violently as he woke up from a nightmare. He was panting heavily and his tattered clothes were soaked with sweat; the sweat had turned the dirt into mud that clung to him in uncomfortable ways. He resolved to take a quick nighttime bath to calm himself down, so he stripped naked before lighting a torch on his fire and beginning the short jaunt to the crick. He tried to recall what'd woken him up along the way.

In his dream, he'd been chased by terrifying shadowy creatures that chanted 'Tim-o-thy, Tim-o-thy, Die-for-me, Die-for-me!' Or . . . something similar, he thought. He couldn't rightly recall what his nightmare had been about anymore, as the memory faded quickly.

He was brought out of his memory as he reached the crick. He set his torch in a tree that hung over the rushing water before bending down to look at his reflection. It had been some time since he'd seen himself, and even longer since he'd seen the orphanage, so he wasn't very surprised when he couldn't recognize the face the stared back at him.

The eyes were the same, still that dull brown, but that was the only thing that remained constant. That, and Miss Tifa's ring; that never changed either. Everything else had, though. His hair had grown long and wild—it hadn't seen a comb nor scissors in months. Even when he'd lived at the orphanage he'd liked it a bit long, almost to his ears. Now it was well past his ears, and it was full of knots and clumps of dirt. His face—actually, his whole body, was covered in small scratches from the rough foliage, as well as the various animals he'd run into. His hands and feet were calloused and blistered a bit, and his nails were becoming long and dirty. And it was all iced with dirt and caked mud. Where once he'd been a bit pale, as he usually preferred staying indoors to read over roughhousing outside with the other children, he was now dark and tanned in some areas. There were a lot of spots were he was just red, but not too many, as the sun wasn't very strong in the woods. And to top it all off, he had an enormous, grizzly crooked scar across his neck that just smiled back up at him. He looked like a wildman or some sort of savage, he decided. Not for long, though, as he quickly jumped into the crick for a bath—happily screaming his best wildman impression all the way.

* * *

"Come onnnn, Tabby!" Kirche whined at her, "Let's stooop already! They did, why can't we?" Tabitha sighed in frustration and readjusted her spectacles. Kirche had been the one that had wanted to follow Louise the most in the first place. So they followed her, kept her within a comfortable watching distance. But give Kirche some traveling and suddenly she wasn't so terribly interested anymore. She'd been complaining for hours, and she'd only become more forceful when Louise's party stopped for the night.

"Fine," she replied, eliciting a squeal from Kirche. Her dragon Familiar was tired anyways. "Down, Sylphid."

Kirche poured blessings upon her, but Tabitha chose to ignore them in favour of guiding them to a safe resting spot. They didn't want to land too near her friend's party and risk discovery, after all. She chose a wooded area, little more than a thicket, with a stream flowing through it. They hadn't brought enough water for their Familiars, so they'd need to drink. They landed with a gentle 'thud', and she hopped off. Kirche, along with her salamander Familiar Flame, jumped off right after and went to collect firewood. Tabitha chose to stay; she needed to speak with her Familiar.

"La Rochelle?" she asked the blue dragon. She snorted and whinnied in dragon fashion before glancing at her questioningly. She couldn't understand the wild sounds, but she caught the gist of what Sylphid was asking.

She cast a detection spell to sweep the area for the uninvited before nodding with satisfaction. "We are alone," she said.

The dragon seemed to breath heavily, and if she were human, Tabitha would have called it a sigh of relief. But she wasn't, at least at that moment, so she didn't.

"Thank you, big-sis!" the dragon chirped as she transmogrified into a buxom and cheerful naked young woman. Tabitha didn't know why her Rhyme Dragon Familiar called her that, as in human form she was considerably taller and more developed than Tabitha herself, but she attributed it to the dragon's childish and impish nature. And they did both look somewhat alike, if one squinted. Both had bluish hair and pale skin. But that was all there was, and it wasn't much, so she didn't think on it long. She instead looked at her Familiar with a tiny upturn to her lips as she waited for her to remember what she'd asked.

Sylphid, or more appropriately Illococoo, which was the name she'd adopted for her human body, blinked several times under her scrutiny before gaining a perplexed look. "Whaaaat?" she asked, "Whaaat are you looking aaat?"

Tabitha coughed into her hand to hide her smile before putting it down and repeating herself. "La Rochelle?" She asked again.

"Oohhhh, thaat! Yeah, that's where we're goin', by the looks of things. Why do you ask?"

"Nothing," she told her Familiar, "A hunch."

"Ooookaay, then, bu—" Illococoo began to reply, but Tabitha quickly silenced her.

"Kirche," she told her Familiar. Kirche had returned with the firewood and triggered her detection spell. The tall girl nodded in understanding before turning back into a dragon and pretending to be asleep. Tabitha pulled out a book to look busy.

"Heeelllooo! I'm home!" Kirche called as she entered the clearing with Flame trailing behind her. The Familiar was loaded with logs and branches and the like; Kirche was carrying a small bundle of sticks. Tabitha didn't answer her—she didn't need to. Her brazen friend knew how things worked.

Kirche and Flame set their piles down where Tabitha indicated, and then the red fire salamander set the fuel alight with its tail. Kirche told set her Familiar to finding more kindling before joining Tabitha on her walk to the stream.

They walked in silence, and Tabitha quietly set her book on a nearby boulder upon arriving at the water's edge. They both pulled out their wands and gave each other looks of confirmation before pointing them at the stream. Kirche was a straight Triangle of Fire, and Tabitha possessed one part Water to two parts Air, but neither of them were particularly specialized with Water magic, so they needed to work together if they wanted to get dinner.

"Well, here we go," Kirche said as she started casting. Tabitha joined her. Kirche would heat up the water with various Fire spells, and Tabitha would freeze it in other areas with her Ice spells. The Ice would prevent the fish in the stream from escaping, and the Fire would boil the water to kill them. It was all a rather slow process, though it had been faster the one time they'd gotten Louise to help them. That girl could just blow the fish out of the water, though they did come along with a good portion of said water. But Louise was sitting around a fire elsewhere, and they were secretly following her, so she wasn't there and fishing would take longer as a consequence. That extra time could always be used for talking was apparently Kirche's philosophy.

"Sooo, have you figured out where we're going yet?"

It wouldn't hurt to tell, she supposed. "La Rochelle."

"Oh? The port city? Where could that lead to . . . ?" she trailed into incoherent mumbling, lost in thought.

"Unknown."

"One . . . hizybizm . . . two . . . myozstredm . . . three . . . hmmmm . . . Ah! Albion! That would have to be their most logical destination," she declared proudly.

Tabitha gave her friend a sidelong stare though her spectacles. "Why?"

"Well, I don't know! It just is. Check a map! Where else would they go?"

Tabitha found herself frustrated once more, though she would admit that it was her own fault on this occasion. Being laconic could have it's downsides sometimes. She shook her head 'no'. She didn't want to know why Albion was the most obvious destination—she'd already deduced that—she wanted to know what would compel Louise to rush off to Albion all the sudden. "No. Why Albion?"

"Ah, that. Didn't she say she worked for her Queen now?"

"Princess," she corrected offhandedly. "And yes." But why? What would Princess Henrietta want that was in Albion? And why send Louise off on her first mission so soon after Knighting her?

"I dunno, Tabby. I dunno, but I don't like it," Kirche's tone was mistrustful. She didn't like the Brimiric nations terribly as a whole, so her mistrust was understandable.

"Same," she told her friend as they finished their job. She cast a levitation on the cooked fish and trailed it behind her as they made their way back to camp. Sylphid picked her head up at the approaching scent of fish, and Flame had long before finished collecting enough lumber to last them the night. Tabitha and Kirche each picked out a fish for themselves from the floating pile before she dumped it on the ground in front of their waiting Familiars.

They were both worried and fascinated by their friend's mission. But not for long. They were coming.

* * *

Henrietta didn't know if it was due to her argument with Iona, or perhaps Louise's Familiar's offhanded question about Iona being her Familiar, or that perhaps there really wasn't a reason for anything, but that night she dreamed of her and Wales' Familiars' deaths.

_It was a night long ago, and yet not so long as it felt. Henrietta's daddy had gone on a diplomatic mission to Albion, and she'd begged to go with him. He was a kind daddy, so he let her go with him. Or maybe he wasn't such a kind daddy; he didn't tell her how boring it would be. But she'd found a way to solve that boredom when she met Prince Wales. He introduced himself as 'Prince Wales Tudor', and he got mad at her when she giggled and told him he had a silly name, but they became fast friends. Together they explored the Royal Castle, and when they got bored with that, they explored the gardens. They got kicked out of the gardens for playing pranks on the old gardener, though, so they went and played hide-and-go-seek in the woods instead. Every day of the fortnight that she was there went like that. They'd play and play and play, and then they'd get in trouble, and then they'd play some more. It was the most fun that either of them had ever had. They both always had so many tutors and lessons and it was ever so tiring, but when they were together none of that mattered. They could fidget through their lessons, and then they'd rush out and play with each other the rest of the day. Of course, that only lasted for the two weeks that Henrietta was there, but by the time she had to leave they both knew that they would be lifelong friends._

_They would play together on many occasions, once or twice, or if they got lucky, then thrice a year. Their visits, whilst short, were always wonderful, and over the years they slowly took on greater meaning to them. They would meet, and things would be wonderful, but by the next time they met one of them would always be different. Wales would get taller, or Henrietta's breasts would start coming in, or just something different; but it was always new and exciting. So they did what young Princes and Princesses did: they fell in love. Just one of these times, however, the change wasn't so immediately obvious. They didn't look any different to each other, they didn't act any differently. Seemingly nothing had changed. They quickly learned that that was not the case, however, as neither of them could keep secrets from the other. The difference, they discovered, was that they'd both summoned Familiars. Wales had summoned a baby Wind Dragon that he named Ciroth, but she called him Ciri, and Henrietta had summoned a little Snow Leopard cub she named Chroma. They made best friends just like their Masters had, and all was well._

_All did not end well, however, as Ciri and Chroma both died. They'd attempted to hold off a pack of wolves that Henrietta and Wales had run into in the mountains whilst exploring, and they'd died for it before their fathers got to them. They both agreed that they would never summon another Familiar again, despite their fathers' complaints, and they never did. The next time they met, it was as if the events on that mountain had never happened, and it was never mentioned again, but they both terribly missed their Familiars. Life went on, however . . ._

* * *

Janick woke up to the sun in his eyes. He'd a splitting headache and a dry mouth, he had an empty mug in his hand and ashes from the long dead bonfire smeared across his face. Just another day in the life of a sell-sword. What he hadn't expected was that he'd find a boozed up Mathi-miss passed out on top of him. Well, someone'd had fun, hadn't she? If only he could remember . . .

Nonethematter, he decided. There was work to do later. Little girls to kidnap and money to be made. He could contemplate Mathi-miss and where they were going afterwords. "Come along, boys!" he yelled as he put her down gently and covered her right proper. She was certainly a damn fine catch if things went well. He'd always liked the idea of having a lass of his own. But that would all have to wait 'till after they made it to the designated checkpoint at the designated time, which by the sun wouldn't be long. "Get yer drunken asses up! Someone go make sure Cromwell's ready! Hurry up, we got shit to do! Running behind schedule, we're running behind!"

His band of men was called the Band of the Wandering Hand, and for good reason, too. Not only did their hands have the tendency to wander, but they considered themselves wandering hired hands. Janick forgot who came up with the name. It was probably a dear friend or something of the like, but they weren't the Band of the Sober Hand, so they frequently forgot most minor details like that. Maybe one lad or another of the group remembered, but it wasn't all that important. The band was made up of wanderers, and wanderers are used to getting up quickly. That was what mattered at the moment. His lads grumbled and cursed his eye, but they were all ready in less than a quarter of an hour.

"Did someone find Cromwell?!" he asked the assembled band.

"Yeah!" someone from the crowd yelled back, "The bloke was passed out half naked in 'is big ol' tent! Damnright disgraceful, I say!"

"Yeah, yeah. I don't care how disgraceful he is, and neither do you! He's got money, and we need it! Beer isn't free! Now, I take it you woke his ass up?!"

"You bet yer sweet ass I did!" another answered. "He's on 'is way! Had to pull 'is pants up and wipe the booze from 'is shirt!"

"Ohohoh?" And there he was. "Good morning to you Oliver!" He hated being called by his given name, like most nobles, so Janick went out of his way to use it.

"That's Lord Cromwell to you, thank you very much. And yes, a wonderful day indeed. But it will be much better when you do your job." No doubt Cromwell was in a hurry to pay his band so he could be be done with them. He was a noble after all; leader of a country, if rumor held true. He wouldn't want to be caught with the likes of them. But it was like he'd said: Cromwell could be as much of a right bastard as he wanted, so long as he payed them for their work.

"You heard the man lads, lets get goin'. Gotta be set up on time!" he told his boys, bringing forth cheers from them as they rode out. He looked to Cromwell and spoke quietly. "What of the Mathi-miss?"

The deposer raised his brow in amusement. "Oh? You seem quite taken with her," he said mirthfully, "Well, worry not. She'll be staying at camp. I'll be returning to her whilst you do your . . . job, in fact." Cromwell somehow had the audacity to find distaste in his line of work, and yet he would employ his men and their methods without a thought. It was like one of his men had said—it was damnright distasteful.

They rode quietly, not wanting to give themselves away. And when they arrived at the designated checkpoint at what Janick assumed was the designated time, Cromwell left back for camp, as promised. Damn good thing, too. None of them missed his presence. It would have just agitated them further.

The basic premise, which had been explained to them the night before, was that Janick, along with his band, would lie in wait for a passing group that would include a couple of nobles. Nothing big. They all thought it was pretty simple, really. They ambush the group, catching them unawares, and take the young noble girl with the pink hair. It was all utterly simple, but that was why none of them liked it. It was too simple. They all wondered why ever, in all the bloody hells, would the ruler of a whole damn country—one that was still at war with itself, mind you—take it upon himself to kidnap a little, insignificant noble girl. There would have to be some reason, and that reason was like as not to get them all killed. But it was like he said: beer isn't free. They needed the money. Like it or not, they were Commoners, and so life was always gonna be rough. So they'd wait it out, and they'd do their jobs, and hope to God that they made it home.

"I know the way, and I'll make it home again . . ." he muttered to himself.

* * *

No matter how many years C.C. had under her belt, she could never get used to mornings. She despised them. They were and always would be the bane of her existence. Every morning she'd struggle to get up, and somehow Lelouch could always find it in himself to get up at the asscrack of dawn. It just wasn't fair! But at least she was in good company in Halkeginia—Louise was just like her. They were comrades in morning hating! Sadly, Lelouch had found a comrade in Wardes, as they both got up with the sun and started poking about at those ungodly hours. A trade-off, but it was more than even. Wardes would not be a permanent presence, but Louise was their Master. So in the end, Team Sloth would win. Hooray . . . !? Celebrate victory with a nap!

. . . Or not. Because they had to get up and go. Whatever. You couldn't blame a girl for trying.

But that had been some time ago. They'd been on the road for hours, just plodding along. At least the griffon wasn't trying to outpace them anymore. Louise had probably scolded the Viscount about that or something, because he'd picked a much easier pace upon taking flight that morning. Then again, maybe it was just the fact that he was flying alone. Their little Master had chosen to ride with her Familiars, claiming that it was her duty to 'ensure that they weren't starved of her presence'. That of course meant that she was still upset at the Griffon Knight's treatment of her.

'But I wonder why none of them have noticed the dragon yet?' Lelouch asked. That was true. It wasn't terribly difficult to see it if one were to just look up. Very up. Maybe that was it.

'Perhaps they never thought that something would fly above them,' she answered. It was a flimsy answer, true, but they both knew that it was the most likely. People just didn't like looking up, that was a general fact of life.

'Let the girls have their fun, you said. So . . .'

'Yepyepyep. Just let it go.'

Louise fidgeted in her lap. "We're almost to La Rochelle," she said. She sounded like she wanted to have a conversation. No doubt their communications were getting to the poor girl.

"Oh? And what should we expect of that?" C.C. humored her. They already knew where they were going and how to get there, but they weren't _so_ bitter as to take even that little explanation away from Louise.

"Wha? You truly don't know?" Louise seemed surprised that there was a gap in her knowledge. Which made perfect sense, as there really wasn't a gap.

"I'm afraid not. Perhaps you shouldn't assume that we know everything?" Because that was likely to happen!

"Hmmp!" she huffed cutely. C.C. had more tact than Wardes, however, so she didn't point that out. "Don't take that tone with me! Maybe I'll tell you, and maybe I won't. I don't have to if I don't want to." She slumped across the horse's neck. "Maybe I'll tell you . . . if you explain that story from last night. I've never heard its like before." Oh? So that was it? Lelouch's little tale was under their Master's skin, it would seem.

"No such luck, I'm afraid. You'll have to ask L.L. It's his story, not mine." Cryptic answers were a godsend!

"Hmmp!" Louise huffed again. "Perhaps I will."

"Well, good lu—" C.C.'s answer was cut short by an arrow through her eye.

'Well that was a bit unexpected,' Lelouch observed.

Louise observed too, but she just screamed and galloped in circles around C.C.'s fallen body.

'Just a bit. Well, I'll just lie here, I guess.'

'You do that. Louise'll be fine.'

Definitely fine. She was running about in circles yet, only with a wand in hand pointed at their attackers. Whilst their little Master was preoccupied, C.C. pulled the arrow out of her brain through her damaged eye socket. It gave a nice juicy 'squick' as it slid out, and it came out covered in all sorts of nasty bits and pieces. Without the arrow to hold it all in place, she started to bleed profusely.

'Well this sucks. What's going on?'

'Louise just blew someone's arm off with one of those failed spells of hers. Poor guy's flailing about like a fish.'

'Oh?'

'Yep. And there goes another. She is just going strong today. Terrible aim, though.'

'You think we could get her some lessons?'

'I don't think so. How's your eye?'

'Ehh . . .' Her eye was just about healed, actually. 'Pretty much done. You want to deal with this now?'

'Meh, what the hell. Might as well. I'd really prefer if that dragon wasn't closing in, but screw it! I'm bored!' he declared as he jumped off of his horse.

'Agreed.' And with that, they were off. C.C. carried the dirty arrow in her hand, and Lelouch grabbed her free hand. She quickly bonked Louise in the back of the head and set her down before they moved off to meet with the attackers, who were positioned behind a roadside bluff hidden within a thicket.

They went around the bluff and hid behind a large bush. They observed that said attackers were what appeared to be a band of mercenaries. For the most part they all held bows of some design or another. A few had swords or knives strapped to their dingy leather armor, but they were obviously a band prepared for ambush. They were all silent, but frenzied. From the looks of things, they were in a hurry. That was too bad, C.C. though, as they wouldn't be getting anywhere anytime soon.

Lelouch sighed in frustration. "Just some rabble, eh?" he stated dully. Banditti were just unhired mercenaries, and that certainly wasn't exciting. "I'll get this over with quickly," he told her lowly as he stood up. She poked her head out to watch.

The band noticed her Grey Demon, and they looked at him expectantly for half a second before charging. She heard him give another frustrated sigh before he spoke.

"Lelouch vi Britannia commands you to die." There wasn't any warmth or excitement in his voice, he was just bored. And maybe a tad miffed that someone had shot his Witch, but that was irrelevant. They needed to get back before anybody noticed they'd left, so they walked away as the mercenaries all began committing suicide, and C.C. made sure to throw the arrow she'd been holding back with their bodies. Wouldn't want to be caught with that, she thought.

* * *

Kirche hopped off of Sylphid and rushed to her friend's aid. They'd been trailing at some distance when they noticed that Louise was exploding _people_. That was not an everyday sight, to say the least. And then she'd fallen down, and they'd feared the worse.

She took in what she was before her. Louise was lying in C.C.'s lap, sleeping by the looks of things. She had to confirm that, however, as there was blood and all sorts of assorted bodily fluids strewn everywhere, and C.C. herself was soaked in those selfsame fluids and viscera.

"Is she . . ."

"She'll be fine," C.C. answered her in that detached tone Louise's Familiars had.

"Does she—does she need anything? Or you? Or . . . Tabitha . . ." She glanced back as said bespectacled girl reached them. ". . . knows a bit of Water based healing magic, and I know a bit of Fire based . . ."

"The woman said she'd be fine," L.L. told her irritably. "But more importantly, where is Wardes?" he questioned the sky. "And why are you two _still_ here? Louise will be upset if she wakes to—"

"—to what?" Louise prompted her Familiar as she stirred from the unconscious. "And how is it that I've been knocked unconscious yet again?!"

"Them," L.L. said with evident exasperation as he pointed towards Kirche and Tabitha dramatically. "And mayhap that Brimir chose to knock you out in one of his unknowable Holy Designs." Kirche giggled at that; that was pretty damn funny.

"Whatever, damn Familiar . . . And just what are you laughing at, Kirche!?"

"Ohohoh, I'm sorry, but—" she started to apologize, but Louise interrupted her.

"Wait . . . Kirche. Tabitha. Tabitha. Kirche. Flame. Sylphid. Kirche. Tabitha." She pointed at each person or Familiar she named, and then her finger was left to hover midair as she became lost in thought. "Tabitha . . . Kirche . . . Me . . . enigmatic Familiars . . . Sylphid . . . Flame . . ." she mumbled, more for herself than to say anything.

Louise's Familiars nodded to each other, apparently making some silent agreement before they began to count down. ". . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . ."

"_What the hell are you doing here?!_"

"And there she goes," C.C. said.

"Well, she's fine, at least," Kirche noted. That was what mattered, really. But then . . . where _was_ Viscount Wardes? Shouldn't he have been the one to protect Louise, so that she didn't have to . . .

Kirche remembered that her friend had been exploding people. "Dear God . . ." There as a man, and then after a certain point, he just ceased to be. His very being had just . . . vaporized. And another, only the explosion had only blown his arm to bits that scattered about him. He'd bled out very quickly, and his blood was just pooled about him lazily. Flies had just barely begun to notice the bodies, and they were starting to buzz about.

"Answer me! Kirche! What are you . . ." Louise noticed her handiwork.

Everybody else just sort of stood there with her and looked. Wardes landed nearby and rushed to them, but he saw it too. "Holy Hell . . . What in God's name did this?"

"Louise," Tabitha hushedly told the man.

He seemed shocked. He didn't say anything for some time. All was quiet, but for the flies. "Louise? My Louise?" The girl just nodded guiltily. "Well . . . as a Knight, you were prone to see something like . . . this eventually. We should go. La Rochelle is only an hour or two's ride away."

The ride to La Rochelle was quiet.

ODD#I(e)/5,iii;69Bcy3178

AN:

One of my reviewers commented that I might try spacing out the dialogue between paragraphs a bit, so I tried to do that. I'm not sure if I like it too much, so don't be afraid to tell me how it turned out. Are my fears unfounded? Or is there something to my tingling writer senses?

There were a lot of shorter scenes in this chapter. I don't know how I feel about that. Wooptydoo.

Word Corner:

I don't think I'll ever get used to using a possessive ' or 's on a French word. It just feels terrible for some reason.

If horseback is one word, well so is griffonback. Ta-da!

Deposer isn't really a word either, apparently. But really, follow the rules of English. Deposer_(n)_: one who deposes

Damnright is a word. I won't even defend it, I hear it so often.

Mine [name] is C.C., yep. That is what it is, yepyepyep! . . . I'm so weird. Then again . . . one could almost call her a dinosaur . . . Hmm . . .


	6. Limbs

**Everything I Touch**

_Chapter 6_

_Limbs_

_"Emma, Jack, Jim, Sam, Tim!" Mathilda called out, "Dinner!" The children heard their names and ran to her. They were a happy lot, for orphans. Well, perhaps Timothy wasn't terribly cheerful. And Samantha was missing half of one of her ears. All the children had little quirks like that, actually. So maybe they weren't the happiest bunch, but they were certainly better off at the orphanage than they had been on the streets._

_"Miss Mathil! Miss Tifa! Dinner! Dinner!" they shouted and giggled as they came back inside the cottage for the night. They were all, save big boy Tim, who was carrying one of Mathilda's old books, covered in dirt and the like from a full day's play. That would be fixed with baths for all the children after they finished eating. Even Tim, who stayed clean every day in his vain attempts to avoid taking a bath._

_They all sat down at the table and eagerly looked to Mathilda with starving eyes. "Where's Miss Tifa?" Jack asked in that sweet tone he had whilst she started doling out their food._

_"She's putting one of the babes to sleep, Jack."_

_"Well, she better hurry up, or there won't be any food left for her!" he declared proudly before tucking in. The other children took that as a signal to begin as well._

_"Yes, I'm sure . . ." she trailed off, looking out the window. The boy didn't know how close he was to the truth. On the meager wages that she made, food was a bit scarce. The kids didn't need to know that, though, so she simply smiled and nodded. They didn't need to know certain things, they were only children. She would let them think that the world was a wonderful place for as long as she possibly could. If only she was like Tiffania, who didn't even have to try to do that, who still saw the world as a bright and cheerful landscape._

_But someone had to see the setting sun for what it was, and Mathilda had done that. She didn't particularly like her new job as a cloaked thief, even if it was a bit liberating seeing the Nobility being brought down to her level. Or maybe she liked being equals with the Nobility once more, but either way she felt it was worth the stain to her honor. And somebody had to pay for the meals and bear the setting sun. It wasn't terrible to her, though. It put things in perspective._

_She put on her cloak and prepared to leave, to become Fouquet once more._

_"Going again!?" the children whined. It brought a wry chuckle to her._

_"Yes, children, yes. You know this, now. I have to go, so you be good for Miss Tifa. You promise?"_

_"We promise!" their rang chorus bittersweetly. With that, she turned to go, but she felt something tug on her cloak. It was Tim._

_"Please don't go, Miss Mathil!" he begged. She was rather fond of the oldest orphan__—__they all were. But she had work to do._

_With a sad smile, she wordlessly embraced the boy before turning and opening the door._

_"Please don't go, Miss Mathil!" she heard him shout, "Please don't!" It brought a tear to her eye, but she closed the door behind her and kept on, purposely shoving his muffled protests to the back of her mind. She had things to go do that she wouldn't be proud of, but she would not be brought down to regretting her actions. So she walked__—__stiffly at first, but her gait improved as Tim's cries faded behind her._

_When at last it was quiet but for the din of nature, she became absorbed in her thoughts of what lie ahead. Particularly, Mathilda saw a strange man on the path to the orphanage. As the distance between them shrunk, she could have sworn that his vague form became steadily clearer, more familiar. Closer, and the glint of the setting sun reflecting off his hairless head blinded her. Closer yet, and at last, "Mathi-miss! There ye is!" the stranger called to her._

_"Mathi-miss!"_

_". . . athi-mi . . ."_

_"Ma . . . iss!"_

_"Mathi-miss . . ."_

_"Mathi-mi . . ."_

_"Mathi . . ."_

_Mathilda._

Mathilda woke to the pain of the sun in her bleary eyes, and it made her wonder. Had Janick woken just the same, only to go out and die? She grasped about the bedside, being careful to be as silent as possible, but her hands found nothing. A look down showed her that she'd drank it all the night before.

She held her breath as she slipped out of the comforter, letting her half of the blanket pool about on the floor around her feet. As the air hit her flesh she thought that it was a bit chilly that morning, but she didn't care all that much. Or about much else, at that moment. Still, she stumbled out of Cromwell's bedchambers in her search for something hard to drink that would ease the pain in her head and the ache in her hips. She'd taken Janick's death, about which Cromwell had informed her in passing the day before, rather hard. Very hard. She blamed it on her incessant guilt and the traces of liquor she'd still had in her from the night before. That didn't stop her from adding to those traces, however.

She found her wand in the next room, under her clothes—she'd need it for something later that day. She tossed those clothes back on whilst she was there. She'd be sorry if she wasn't efficient, or something. Those sluggish thoughts didn't fully register.

Mathilda reached the kitchen in the large apartment Cromwell had rented for their stay in La Rochelle and began digging through the pantries. Nobles didn't usually stray into the kitchens, but she wasn't really a Noble anymore, not that she'd thought about that in years. One pantry held some fruits, another held a few clean dishes. She passed by them, clanking whatever it was that was in her way, until she at last struck rich. A jar of cheap wine that tasted more like vinegar than alcohol. Whatever, so long as it got her drunk, she dismissed as she settled down and started tossing back the sour wine.

"Up early, are we?" Cromwell asked with amusement as he stepped into the door frame. He didn't enter, though; Nobles were above entering the kitchens. He hadn't bothered to dress himself yet, not that he needed to; it was nothing new to her.

"Ahh, go pishh yeshelff," she slurred halfheartedly, though she immediately regretted it. "Shhorray 'bout dat. Pardohn mah rudenesh."

"Worry not, my dear. You don't know what you're saying anyways." He sighed irritably. "I should have known you'd turn to the drink, shouldn't have said a thing about those useless mercs. You got far too chummy with each other too quickly, I should have known this would have happened," he muttered under his breath. She heard him, though.

"Heey! They washn't ushless mercs! They was ushless sell-shords!" she corrected him rather indignantly.

He sighed again, for some odd reason. "And that's how I know you're plastered."

"Whatsh that s'posed ta mean?!"

"Nothing, nothing at all. Try to sober up whilst I find something to wear. You've got something to do later. Try to keep that in mind before you get too far gone," he said over his shoulder as he walked away, leaving her just as confused and slightly more drunk for it.

Whatever, she dismissed again, though rather bitterly this time. She'd had about enough of Cromwell's crap. Too bad she was too guilt-ridden to do anything about it, even if he did deserve it. That was her fault, or something.

Whatever. She set the empty jar of wine down and went looking for another.

* * *

La Rochelle lay before them in all its grandeur, nestled twixt the bluffs and reaching for the sky. From afar, it was a jewel of architecture and a melting pot of culture and commerce. But then it was upon them, and from within its walls it wasn't nearly so pristine. Certainly the cliffs were still to either side, but they loomed and cast shadows on the open streets. And certainly there was much culture and commerce, but oft as not the melding was unseemly, or as Kirche put it, the cultures were puzzle pieces that didn't quite fit together they way you wanted them to. Far too frequently they came into violent conflicts with each other that culminated in bar fights and murders. Less like a melding, it seemed more like the cultures were welded together haphazardly with no thought to beauty. But it was beautiful from the outside, and it was a crossroad, so tourists were not an uncommon sight. They likely didn't stay long, Louise mused, and they most definitely didn't return. There were better cities with lower crime rates and fewer brothels, after all. Then again, that might have been what attracted some of them. Nasty thought, that was, so she quickly put it out of mind.

Her party, which had grown for some reason that she was not entirely certain of, had pointedly not made any conversation whilst on their way to the Gallian port city. That'd changed when they reached the harbor, however, as none of them knew where they'd be staying the night. The . . . episode with the banditti had slowed them down enough that they'd missed their ship, and the next wasn't scheduled to leave until the day after, so they were stuck in La Rochelle for the night. It all frustrated her to wit's end, as her mission was urgent.

Something else that had her at wit's end just so happened to be one Viscount Jean-Jacques de Wardes, who was at the moment discussing their arrangements for the night. He was ever-so-kindly paying for their hotel, a classy place—best in the city, they claimed—known as the Goddess' Temple, which was all-in-all a rather chivalric move on his part. But he'd also asked that she room with him, which was not something that she intended to do. Fiancée or not, they weren't wed and she was uncertain about her feelings for him. That, and maybe she was still a bit peeved about him commenting on her cuteness. Either way, she still refused. Her refusal was polite at first, but she became more insistent when he did. Louise Vallière was not someone to be trifled with, nor was she a pushover. And she was still shocked from her . . . self-defense. Wardes was too, it seemed, as when she became insistent he quickly pedaled back with a small, tight grimace.

Disconcerting as that was, she hadn't been in the mood to think on it, and whilst she had the upper-hand, so to say, she took full advantage of it and bullied him into paying for a rearrangement of their rooms. She would be sharing her room with her Familiars, as, though she'd stolidly refute the fact if asked, they _were_ becoming a familiarity to her. Kirche and Tabitha would have the room next to her's—it had an adjoining door, perfect for the talk that she intended to have with them. And just so coincidentally, Wardes' room was across the hall. She certainly hadn't planned for that. No, she was much more subtle and deft than that. He hadn't thought so, but a little glare and a tug of her wand had silenced his grumbling. She decided that she liked this newfound control she had over him.

She certainly didn't see his little sneer as he turned away.

Or, at the least she denied it. The Viscount had never shown himself to be a petty man. Regardless, they had proper sleeping arrangements, unlike her last stay in the city, and she liked it. If city life, at least for a Noble such as herself, was always so wondrous, then she could say that she would love every day of it. The brothels and bars didn't pop up anywhere near the upper class districts, so they could be ignored. But perhaps it wouldn't be so wonderful, she reflected, as her Familiars had plopped themselves down on the admittedly vastly over sized bed that filled the room. The only bed. She'd forgotten to request two beds, as she'd done for her friends. She didn't honestly know if it should have been three beds, as her Familiars refused to clarify the depths of their relationship, or even if there was one. Nonethematter, she still only had one bed, and even though it was more than big enough for the three of them, she knew for a fact that the simple fact that the other people she'd be sharing the bed with were her Familiars meant that there wouldn't be enough space for three—they both seemed to have made it a personal mission in life to hog the covers and make sleeping in general a difficult task.

It was, as a matter of fact, that she ended up going to bed early that night. No one was particularly talkative, and it was terribly obvious to Louise that the altercation with the highwaymen still weighed heavily upon their minds. So came to pass an early bedtime for Louise. But as she was rooming with her Familiars, so too came to pass her interest in sleep. As tiring as travel was, she wasn't able to catch any rest. It was a fact of her life that at any given time the space near her Familiars would be filled with periodic noise and chatter that only she seemed to hear. It wasn't usually present come bedtime, but Louise suspected that it was the change of location or something that caused it this night. But, either way she couldn't fall asleep with all the voices, so she set out to do what she'd vaguely planned earlier and walked through the door to her friends' room.

She certainly hadn't expected to walk in on them changing for the night. But she had. They'd both been on opposite sides of a folding privacy screen, but that had done none of them any good, as it was positioned in such a way that, upon opening the guest door, she was capable of, and incapable of not, seeing either side of the screen. Of course Louise knew what a naked woman looked like—she was one, and it would make bathing terribly difficult if she wasn't allowed to see herself—but she'd, perhaps a bit naively, never expected to see her friends in such a light. What a sight. A rather bizarre one, at that.

All of them, excepting to some degree Tabitha, as her cries were as muted as everything else she said, screamed rather girlish, wordless screams, and Louise quickly—very quickly—shut the door. She only reopened it after waiting several minutes to receive a muffled confirmation from Kirche of her friends' proper states of dress through the door

"We're decent now, if you're still there."

Louise released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and centered herself before turning the knob and reentering. To her everlasting relief, they were both wearing their nightgowns. Kirche was sprawled out upon her bed, so Louise took a seat next to Tabitha on hers and eyed them both in the momentary quiet.

"So . . ." she began,"I'd like an explanation, to be frank."

Kirche shifted uncomfortably before muttering what Louise guessed was supposed to be an answer.

"Come again?"

" . . . were . . . bo . . . yo . . ."

"Once more? I didn't quite catch that."

"We were . . . about you . . ."

Louise blinked with frustration as she tried to understand her friend. It was all rather perplexing to her, as Kirche had never been one to keep quiet before. Thankfully, Kirche wasn't her only friend.

"Worried," Tabitha clarified. Kirche squawked in what appeared to be a highly flustered and indignant manner.

Louise smirked just a bit vainly and enjoyed the moment. Worried about her, huh? She hadn't expected something like that out of her immediate family, and perhaps the Princess. It was a nice feeling. They'd ignored her demands that they stay out of her business, but . . . they'd done it for her sake, so she couldn't be mad with them. Not very much, anyways. Appearances had to be kept up, after all.

"The Royal Princess Henrietta de Tristain's Knight Scholar Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière hereby conscripts one Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt Zerbst the Ardent and one Chevalier Tabitha the Snowstorm as guards of Her Royal Highness' personal emissary to the Royal Family of Albion." She pulled out her badge whilst speaking and tucked it away again after she was done.

After finishing, she got up and stepped towards the balcony door. She threw open the curtains and let the moonlights bathe her through the glass doors for a ponderous moment before opening them as well and stepping out. A gust of wind caught her hair, but she pushed it out of the way and leaned onto the balustrade. She heard her friends join her soon after, and the three of them had a moment of quiet understanding. Things would be fine. She wasn't upset anymore. There was nothing for it; they were friends now—accomplices in her life's missions whether she liked it or not.

"The moons are getting closer," she told no one in particular.

Kirche hummed with half-interest.

"Albion's closer," Tabitha chimed in.

Albion moved with the moons, and it was during the lunar penumbrae that it was closest to Halkeginia. It would drift out over the western sea when the penumbra was over. The penumbrae occurred when the larger white moon, Antiphon, eclipsed the smaller pinkish one, Peregrinus, and they would for a short time coalesce in a flourish of dusty peach moonbeams.

They said it represented some great battle, some great tiding, some great love. No one agreed on what it represented beyond that it was great and mysterious. And how shouldn't it be? It was the skies, the very heavens! What held them aloft? Why did they move as they did? Did they tell a tale? What mysteries were hidden beyond the reach and scope of man? Louise wasn't entirely fond of the lunar penumbrae, but not for of any of those whimsical reasons. No, she disliked them simply because she liked both moons. It was odd not seeing both, and the dilute glow they gave off during the event was a bit warmer, murkier, a bit less serene. Some things weren't meant to be that close. She preferred it when they shared the night.

Louise blinked, thinking she had some sort of double vision. For a second it appeared as though there were once more two moons in the sky. There was the peachy glow of the lunar penumbra, and then there was a dull shadowy brown lump that slowly rose to eclipse the eclipse. The irony was not lost to her, but then she realized that it was an earthen golem. That was terribly familiar for some reason, she thought. Hmm . . . ah, there she was. Miss Longueville, Fouquet, Mathilda—Louise didn't really know which name was appropriate anymore. Probably Mathilda, as that was supposedly her real name. But then she _was_ wearing the infamous Fouquet cloak; was Fouquet perhaps an occupational pseudonym? And that would make the masked man accompanying her her employer. Or . . .

Whilst Louise was daydreaming about the proper name of their assailant, Tabitha and Kirche had much more logical reactions; they attacked the golem. Louise had shared Fouquet's descriptions with them during one slumber party or another, so they recognized the threat on sight, even if Louise was momentarily moonstruck. Thankfully, the splash of Kirche's flames against Fouquet's towering construct successfully routed Louise from her musings.

"What the hell?!" she shouted, finally understanding the situation.

"Baheha, noshing, noshing ash all!" Fouquet yelled apologetically from atop her golem.

Not a second later Louise was forced to jump out of the way of a wild swipe from one of the golem's arms. It sailed over her head, and she began her count. Once.

She pulled her wand out of her evening gown—a girl should never be without one—and pointed it at the construct. She'd long before given up on casting any real spells, but she'd learned that her failures had some worth—explosions always had their uses, after all.

Kirche and Tabitha traded turns ducking and firing at the massive animated rock. Louise did what she could to fight Fouquet's golem, blasting off chunks here and there. But it was all futile, as it would only reform a second later and begin attacking once more.

Louise shouted, "Look out!" to her friends as ducked under yet another sloppy swing. The fist scraped the balustrade, tearing several of the balusters out and sending them flying. Twice.

Her friends heard her and ducked as well, but in the brief time that they'd all been on the floor the mysterious man had appeared behind them. Louise, still lying prone, noticed a purplish flash just in time to watch him jump away and off the balcony into the murky night.

As soon as the threat of being crushed by dirt was momentarily abated, Louise dashed to her friends's aid. She discovered that there was a powerful sedative spell cast on them. It was so powerful that it was almost life risking. Louise angrily cast an explosion at another incoming stone fist, entirely blowing it apart. She felt a small wave of déjà vu as she recalled that she'd blown a man's arm off but the day before, but it quickly passed, to be replaced with further more rage. Someone had nearly killed Tabitha and Kirche with some hackneyed spell! How dare he just up and disappear!

"Who the hell do you think you are?!" she vented her rage on the unprepared Fouquet, sending another failed spell to blow off a goodly portion of the golem's chest.

She hadn't expected a reply, but Fouquet gave her one. "M'namess Mathilda! Who de 'ell d'ya thank you ish?! . . . Shorry 'bout the hell . . . and this." The golem—she supposed she should call it Mathilda's golem instead of Fouquet's, in light of the revelation of the woman's preferred name—swung again and Louise was forced to blast away yet another earthen arm.

Even less than Louise had expected a reply, she had not expected and apology. She had most definitely not expected a drunken one. What had happened to the Fouquet that brazenly tried to kidnap her? They sang that Mathilda had fallen, but Louise wondered just how far . . .

"Get, you! If you hurt them, I swear I won't forgive you! I'll hunt you down!" Louise shouted as she blew off the other arm of the golem. It began to regrow, just like before, but that was inconsequential. It had already happened, Louise realized. Her Geass had gone off again. She'd only half-intended to use it, but she didn't care. It didn't matter what the woman's reasons or motives were; she was threatening the safety of Louise and her life's accomplaces.

The reaction was nearly instantaneous. Mathilda screamed. "Ah! That goddamn light! You!" she shouted almost soberly. But that had not been what Louise had been expecting. Neither had she been expecting for the obviously intoxicated thief to jump off of her dissolving golem and begin approaching her.

In that instant Louise began to wonder why no one else had come. Where was the city watch? Wardes? Her Familiars? L.L., C.C.? She could have sworn that she could almost catch a glimpse of them peeking through the door to their apartment, but that was insane. She couldn't even see that. All she could see was that there was a drunken Fouquet hovering over her.

"You! It was you!" she said as she staggered another step closer to Louise. Louise backed away from her.

"You!" Fouquet chanted. "You! You! That light! You!"

Louise felt something against her back and realized that she'd reached the wall.

"You!" she said once more, tersely. Louise could smell alcohol on her breath and bittersweet lingering scents of old sex and days without a bath on her body. This was not the Fouquet she'd imagined. No, it was a terrifying, shattered replica. Louise held her breath, just as much from fear as from the smell of the woman.

"That light! It was you!" Louise noticed that Mathilda had startlingly dark eyes. During her time as Miss Longueville she'd had lively bright yellow eyes, but much of their light was gone; nearly all of it.

"Wh-what?! What do you want from me!?"

"That light! It was you!"

"Y-y-yes . . ."

"It was you," the thief repeated. "It was you. It was you. The light . . ."

Suddenly, Mathilda collapsed on Louise and began weeping. Louise had no idea how to respond to that, so she just let the older woman have at it. She couldn't properly figure out what had just happened, nor could she discern any reason why. And yet it had happened. Under the light of a lunar penumbra, Louise was pressed against a balcony wall by a crying thief that smelt of depression and abuse.

"Uh . . . hello? Ah, ugh . . ." Louise couldn't think of what to say, nor was she strong enough to wiggle out of the woman's grasp. And her wand was ineffective so close anyways—an explosion at this range would likely blow them both up, she surmised. She wasn't entirely sure, as she was pretty new to the whole exploding people thing.

"It wash you, washn't it? That light? I'm shorry, I'm shorry, I'm shorry . . ."

"Y-yes! It was me! Get off of me, woman!"

Unexpectedly, she actually complied. Mathilda sat up with tears streaming down her face and completely disregarded the wand that Louise had immediately interpolated between them, opting instead to wipe her tears on her raggedy tatter of a cloak.

"It-it wash you. That light?" she repeated once more. Louise nodded silently, still on guard.

"Then, what wash it? Is it why I feel thish way? Pleash, why?"

And then Louise realized that she'd Geassed this woman long ago, that these awful smells and the wrinkles in Mathilda's eyes from crying were her doing. She'd turned the woman into a wreck. She'd said she'd never forgive her, but she'd had some time to perhaps cool off on her opinion of the thief. But still, what she'd done . . .

But Louise looked at the woman. Just looked at her. She'd been the pinnacle of what it meant to be a free woman, and Louise had gone and cracked the thin veneer over reality that that illusion had painted. Fouquet had been a vain thief, but this was Mathilda the Crumbling Resolve in full force.

Louise found it difficult to recall why she'd done this. She'd heard the report—Fouquet was protecting some friend by being a thief. Had she condemned this woman's friend? Did it even matter why she'd done it, so much as _that_ she'd done it?

"It is the power of Geass," L.L. told Mathilda as he stepped out onto the balcony. Louise could hear the crunch of two distinct pairs of feet, so she knew that C.C. was there as well. It didn't surprise her as much as it should have that they would appear at such a time. Perhaps she was getting used to their mysterious ways. Or perhaps not. She could have very well just have been in some sort of shock, after all.

Mathilda replied confusedly, "Geass?"

"Yes, Geass. The actualization of a person's deepest wish," he repeated.

"You wished for _this_?" That question was directed back at Louise. The accusation made her to wince.

"N-no . . ." She tried to articulate what her desire was. "Mine is the Geass of Absolution . . ."

"Absolution? As in forgiveness?! That's a ludicrous power! How did you get something like that?"

Louise was about to say when C.C. interrupted her. "It's hereditary."

"Oh, then . . ." she trailed off disappointedly. "Might you undo it?"

"She can't," C.C. answered for her. Louise hadn't even known that. "But I can help you, given you stop helping Reconquista." Louise hadn't known that her Familiars had any interest in politics either.

"Really?" both Louise and Mathilda asked, to which C.C. nodded. Well that was news to her. They were just chock full of information tonight, she mused.

Mathilda became quietly thoughtful. "I'm going to regret this," she murmured with renewed tears, but the optimism in her voice clashed completely with her mournful image. "But I regret every other damn thing, might as well add it to the list." Louise was too conflicted to reply to that; she'd been the one that'd caused that guilt in the first place. The least she could do was let the woman have her moment.

Mathilda wiped her eyes again before looking down at her tear stained cloak. "I should really get this washed." She hiccuped a small self-depreciative laugh. "And damn do I stink like shit."

Mathilda looked about. "I suppose I'll go, then. We'll meet again," she said as she began stepping away. She cast a couple of lower level spells that fixed the balustrade and the glass doors before jumping on the parapet. She whispered, "Buhbye." With a small upturn of the corners of her mouth the tattered thief jumped back, through the scattered moonbeams, and was gone.

Louise turned back to find her Familiars carrying Tabitha and Kirche back to their beds. It was late. Sleeping sounded like a good idea to her. She'd talk to her Familiars some other time.

* * *

For once, Louise was the first to bed, so she was able to reclaim a bit of the space her Familiars usually stole that night. It was a nice night, she slept relatively well. So for once she was the first to wake up of all of her party. Upon waking, she tiptoed over her Familiars and over to the door to her friends' room to check on them, and let out a small sigh of relief when she saw that they were sleeping peacefully. She also learned that Kirche snored loudly, which she filed away for later squabbles, but mostly she was relieved to see that they were well. She didn't know when the sedative spell would wear off, so perhaps that contributed to her waking before her friends. Wardes had no such excuse, however, so she was a bit proud when she was walking back to her room from the kitchens after ordering breakfast for her party only to witness the Viscount stumble sleepily out of his room—still in his long johns, for the matter.

"Well goo'morn to you, Viscount!" she teased him in a singsong voice. He only then noticed her, and barely at that, so she couldn't help but have a little giggle.

"Oh, well—" He paused to sigh loudly and proceeded to smack his lips whilst rubbing his eyes for some time. "Well, goo'morn to you too, Louise."

"Yes, a very good one at that," she teased him again before opening the door to her room and slipping in. The jab seemed to fly over his sleep-clouded head, and he just dumbly shuffled off towards the restrooms with a grunt.

She paused after closing the door to listen to him walk away. When she turned around, she came face to face with Familiars that had been asleep when she entered. A choked 'eep' escaped her lips before she reigned herself in and gave them a withering glare, not that she thought it would accomplish anything.

"Not bad," C.C. said approvingly to . . . something. Whatever it was, L.L. agreed with her. He nodded and said something strange about improving reaction time or some such nonsense. Louise didn't care enough to ask, so she just let them go on out the door. She didn't have to worry about them heading off anywhere; they were far too complacent with bewildering Louise to leave. And they'd promised they'd stay, so she had faith that they would.

Once again alone, Louise headed back to check on her friends again. The adjoining door was cracked open, which was odd. She could have sworn that she'd closed it, but she didn't dwell on that. Instead, she entered. She walked over to the sleeping figure of Kirche and felt her forehead, like she'd seen her mother do. Louise didn't actually know what she was feeling for, but she felt satisfied after checking Kirche and went to do the same to Tabitha. She was fine as well, though blessedly she didn't snore. Kirche had an oddly peaceful look on her face when she slept, despite the horrendous racket she was making. Tabitha didn't; she silently bore a small frown, and the rapid quivering of her eyelids told Louise that she was dreaming fitfully. It probably wasn't a very nice dream if it could make her quiet friend react in such a manner; Tabitha was, in Louise's experience, almost always completely unfazed by just about everything.

She was about to remove her hand when unexpectedly Tabitha's eyes shot open and she gave a distressed look about her. Louise finished drawing back her hand from her somewhat frightened friend and pat her reassuringly on the head before sitting up.

"Nightmare?" she asked.

Tabitha sighed, probably trying to collect her nerves again. She gave Louise a nod in reply.

Louise left it at that, as it wasn't really her business to ask. Especially not so early. She went to check on Kirche again and discovered that her more boisterous friend had begun to have some sort of cauchemar as well. Louise unceremoniously threw her out of the bed to wake her up, drawing a terrified shriek of protest from the redhead.

"You awake now, Zerbst?" she teased. There was much teasing to be done when one woke first, she realized.

"What the hell, Vallière!?" Kirche yelled back angrily.

"You seemed to be having some sort of devil-dream, so I thought I'd do you a favour," she replied mock-innocently. Yes, much teasing.

"Yes, well, yeah . . . But, so what?! I was sleeping!"

"And we need to leave early this morn. It was your idea to tag along with me, I'm sure—Tabitha is certainly much too levelheaded to come up with such a silly idea—so you're going to have to suffer the consequences. This morning's consequence," she said whilst stealing the comforter from Kirche's fallen form, "is waking up early. Come now, I've ordered that breakfast be brought up, so be ready—and dressed properly—for when it comes. I shall return with the food." Louise stepped calmly over her overwhelmed friend and out the room to wait for the food to come.

Louise had to wait some few minutes before breakfast arrived on a silver cart, but when it did she directed that the servant push the food laden cart into her friends' room. Thankfully they were properly dressed when she entered this time. The servant set the table out on the balcony and she shooed him away with a small tip as thanks.

It was a small breakfast. There was some toast and jam, some tea, a bit of ham; it was meant to be eaten quickly. They were in a hurry to catch their rescheduled ship, after all. In sitting out on the balcony as they were, it occurred to Louise that neither of her friends seemed the least bit concerned about what had happened there the night before. She watched them over her finished breakfast as they finished theirs. It was a bit unnerving, how blasée they were towards the whole thing, to not even mention it.

"Is something the matter, Louise?" Kirche asked her, breaking her out of her trance.

"N-no, nothing really. I was just ah . . ." What was she doing? She'd been lost in thought about how nonchalant her friends were towards being knocked out with a sedative spell, but she wouldn't admit that. She was, umm, she was . . . "wondering what your nightmare was about. Tabitha was having one before I woke her, too."

"Oh, but I bet you didn't push her out of bed, now did you?" Kirche harrumphed. Still, she went on and answered her. "It was an odd dream filled with witches and demons and birds. I don't really know what to make of it, but it dredged up odd memories that I'd swear weren't my own. Thoroughly frightening, yes. But I'm a woman leagues above what you could ever hope to realize, so I was fine. More than fine, even. So fine, in fact, that had you not so rudely ruined my dreaming, I'm certain that I would have made sense of it all. Wonderful job, Vallière!" She stuck out her tongue as she finished and blew a raspberry. But in her exposition she failed to notice what Louise did—that Tabitha's eyes grew wide at the tale. Louise kept quiet on that, too, though, and instead opted to make eye contact with her blue haired friend. Tabitha's eyes met hers and they came to a silent understanding that they would not be sharing with Kirche: Tabitha had apparently been dreaming much the same dream before waking. But even with that, she wouldn't be sharing with either of them that she knew what it was they'd been dreaming.

"How very interesting, Kirche," Louise drawled. "Thank you very much for sharing that with us, then. It was a thoroughly enlivening tale, but now we must be going." Her friends had finished eating, though in Tabitha's case she'd simply stopped eating. "Go fetch your Familiars from the stables, why don't you? I'll go looking for mine," she said briskly, shoving Kirche and Tabitha into the hallway. She was headed for the dining room, which was the opposite direction of the stables, so they split up with a curt 'ta-ta for now'.

Climbing down the stairs and walking to the dining room she found her Familiars. And strangely, Wardes. He seemed to be attempting to interrogate or intimidate them. That idea was just hilariously, utterly, preposterous! She walked up behind the man and pat him on the back. "Give up on it, Viscount! It's no use; never will be."

He scoffed a tad vainly. He wasn't trying to score any points with her, apparently. "Ha, not for one such as myself. Obviously you lack the skills and experience necessary for proper negotiations."

She angrily questioned, "Obviously?" Saying such rude things to her would not go over well.

He sputtered a bit of his wine at that. Served him right—he shouldn't be drinking so early anyways. "W-well, you see, I'm a highly trained and qualified expert in the arts of deception and information gathering," he supplied weakly.

"Oh? Then you're skilled in the art of knowing as well? Would you like to go up against my Familiars in a knowing contest?"

He shrunk into his seat just a tad. "No, no, that won't be necessary! I've seen enough, woman, I've seen enough. Would you look at the time? We should get going, shouldn't we? Hehe, I'll go fetch my griffon. Hehehe . . ." His nervous laughter quickly faded as he slunk away towards the stables.

"Odd man, that," L.L. commented.

"Quite," Louise agreed. "But he was right, so let's be off." They stood up without protest and joined her in exiting through the front door into the not so busy streets of La Rochelle's upper class district. Louise had a feeling that the guard were payed to keep the poor out of the area, but as that didn't pertain to her mission she decided to ignore the inkling. The port wan't in the upper class district anyways, so they quickly left it behind as they climbed La Rochelle's main hillock.

The port was located in the branches of an absolutely massive hollowed-out tree at the top of the hillock, so it was a bit of a long walk. One could always hire a rickshaw to get there, but Louise didn't have very much of her own money, and the scenery wasn't terrible, so she opted to walk instead. Either way, she made it to the port in time to meet up with everyone else right in front of their ship.

"Ready, then?" Wardes asked one last time before speaking to the shipwright. There was a quick discussion and some muted conversation before the Viscount handed over some money and nodded to them. When they joined him on the ship they were shown to a couple of small rooms which they'd be sleeping in before the sailor that'd lead them there returned to his duties above deck.

"Trouble, Viscount?" Kirche hummed, obviously attempting to seduce the man. That brought a contemptuous snort to Louise.

"Leave the man alone, Kirche. Now, then, what was all that fuss about?"

Wardes smirked a bit devilishly before replying, "He didn't want to admit anyone so soon before—" The ship shook violently, interrupting him. ". . . before takeoff, which it seems we nearly missed."

Kirche yawned disinterestedly. "Why leave so early, is what I'd like to know!" She went to plop down on one of the beds in the room only to discover that Louise's Familiars had already done so.

"Because Albion's movements are dictated by the solar cycle as well as the lunar penumbrae, my dear," Wardes answered.

"Oh? How so? I thought that it was the penumbrae alone that dictated where it was in the sky." She went to plop down on the other bed only to discover that her Familiar, Flame, and Tabitha had claimed it already. He'd been the only other Familiar that was small enough that needn't be left on deck, but Kirche was obviously regretting having made that decision. She gave an exasperated sigh and settled for leaning against the wall.

"The movements of the moons, as you know, hold sway over the location of the Floating Continent in relation to the rest of Halkeginia. The rising and falling of the sun on the other hand controls how close it is to the ground. It's at dusk, when the day is giving way to night, that Albion is at its closest to the ground. It obviously takes much less magic, which is expensive for the commoners that fly this vessel, to fly when their target is at its closest, so they leave before the sun crosses the morning horizon. It's timed so that they arrive just when Albion is at its closest, and thus they make every trip more economical. It's about money, dear. All about . . ." he trailed off when he realized that Kirche had begun to snore. Louise couldn't really blame her, for once, as it _was_ a pretty boring lecture.

"How quaint . . ." he attempted to rationalize the redhead's blatant rudeness, but it wasn't particularly convincing. "Well, then! I'll go speak to the captain. I'll see you later," he declared before storming out the door in a huff.

"Teehee, well done, Kirche," Louise told her friend as she stopped pretending to be asleep. "You chased him away right proper!"

"Yes, well, I still don't believe what you said about me snoring in my sleep!"

"Whatever, whatever. That's beside the point. We'll be going, then." Her Familiars got up from their resting spot, though they were quickly replaced by Kirche. No doubt her friend was tired. Tabitha seemed to be fine with not getting much sleep, but Kirche was obviously weary. That was just one of the consequences of following her, Louise thought as she crossed the hall to her room.

She settled down in the bed that C.C. and L.L. hadn't taken up and let out a contented sigh.

"Flying ships, eh?" C.C. asked. An odd question, but Louise took it in stride.

"Yep."

Things were quiet for some time before she remembered she had questions. "So, how about one of you tell me what you did to Tabitha and Kirche?"

She could hear the raised brow in L.L.'s reply, "We didn't give them Geass."

Louise hadn't even thought of that possibility, but it wasn't what she was interested. "I didn't ask what you didn't do, I asked what you did."

C.C. let out an annoyed grunt. "Showed them horrifying memories to wake them up," she said brusquely. So her Familiars had horrifying memories? That wasn't really unusual, so it wasn't really a useful puzzle piece in figuring them out. She kept it for later reference anyways, though. But it didn't explain her friend's strange amnesia.

"Is that all?"

"Aye little Master, you caught us!" L.L. mocked her. "We censored their memories of the night before."

So apparently her Familiars had strange mental powers connected to Geass, Louise concluded. It was a bit terrifying to dwell on whether those powers might have ever been turned on her, but they _had_ used them properly the night before—it would certainly complicate things if her friends knew about Fouquet or Louise's Geass, after all—so she tried to push those worries out of mind.

"Well, ask next time before you go brain zapping my friends, or there'll be punishments to mete out," she told them snappishly. They didn't respond, which was rather annoying.

"Bah! Damn Familiars!" If they weren't going to recognize her, she didn't see any reason to be timid about her displeasure. She had far too many questions to ask them, and all they did was sit there and make that godawful static chatter. She didn't care about the half-heard conversations they were making, she didn't know what half of the crap that buzzed around them meant, nor did she care; she'd given up on understanding what any of it meant. If they could read minds they weren't telling her, and Louise couldn't really blame them if that was true, but she wanted to know things about her own Geass. She wanted to know who in the world they were. Familiar or not, she still despised that her own Familiars were such enigma to their own Master, that they seemed to know so much and yet refused to share their knowledge. It was just so . . . utterly vexing!

"Oh oh oh?" C.C. chuckled, breaking Louise from her reverie. "Such is life, isn't it?"

Louise had no idea what C.C. was talking about, but the idea of exploding her Familiars seemed wonderful at the moment. And they seemed to have some sort of incredible healing factor or something, so she could do it as many times as she liked!

"No, no, we can't have that, now can we?" L.L. tutted. It grated on Louise's nerves.

"No, I suppose not. Pooh . . ."

"Well, then?"

"Yes, well, here we go, then."

Louise was just about to just whip out her wand and blow them to high hell when they sat up and looked at her oddly. It was one of those indescribable looks that told her nothing about what they were thinking and yet hinted that it was important. It scared her a bit, that look. But her hand was only stilled for so long as was necessary to process this. She saw that look frequently enough that she could ignore it. She began to reach for her wand again.

"No, no. That won't be necessary, little Louise," L.L. stated sweetly with a creeping smile. She froze for a brief second out of fear. That tone was not supposed to go with that facial expression. It was abhorrently unnatural.

"That's a good Master. Yes, now, I believe you had questions?" he asked. But that smile made it quite clear that she had no choice in the matter, that she _would_ ask questions. There was no threat to it, it was just a command. She got the odd feeling that her Familiar had extensive experience commanding people.

She nodded that 'yes', she did. She kept quiet, though.

"Well, out with it, then," C.C. coerced her. Coerced. As in sweetly. But, again, it was not a natural kindness that rang in her voice.

"Well, I, uhh . . ." She didn't really know were to start, but then it came to her that she should focus on the more pressing matters first. "Why did my Geass fail to work on Mathilda? It's never failed before!"

"Orrrrr," C.C. purred, "'Am I becoming a Failure with Geass as well?' Your thoughts were thus, correct?"

Louise nodded 'yes' again, more jerkily this time. She didn't know how C.C. knew that, as she most certainly hadn't told her that. Perhaps she needed to work on reigning in her body language.

"Not. To. Wor-ry!" C.C. winked oddly and punctuated every syllable with a lively shake of her index finger, all whilst maintaining her sickly sweet tone.

L.L. started with an 'ahem'. "Yes, not to worry. Every Geass is different. Some only work once on a given person, which might have happened. Some people become resistant to Geass with extended exposure, as Mathilda might have done. How long has it been, anyways? A month? Two? Four? We do have such a difficult time distinguishing the days, I'm afraid. But, yes, extended exposure is a possible explanation."

Well that was an answer . . . sort of. It was likely the best she would get, so she moved on like any other remotely sane girl would have done. Then, with the most important thing out of mind, she moved on to the oldest one.

"What was that poem-song-chant thing? What happened to the king?"

They ignored her. "Next question, then?" L.L. asked. It was unnerving, so she decided to let it fall. She remembered Mathilda's state of mind and decided her next query.

"Why didn't she . . . hate me?" Louise had ruined her, after all. It only followed that the woman should hate her.

C.C. laughed dryly. "Because she can't," she said mirthfully. "That woman can't hate anybody but herself. That's how Geass works, little Master—it's absolute. The Geass of Absolute Sin, you could call your Geass of Absolution. She's in her own personal purgatory."

"Sin? How is Sin anything like Absolution!?" she demanded. Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière was not a sinful heretic!

"Teehee, do you think them so distinct? They're not. You could even call it the Geass of Sin and Absolution if you were so inclined to be technical. You can't have one without the other, on some level they exist together in any sentient being. Your Geass seems to exacerbate the condition, that balance. The Geass you issued to Mathilda was so potent that you completely tipped the scales. That woman feels as if everything she does, everything she _is_ is sin incarnate. Wonderful job!"

"Well, whatever! You said you could reverse it, didn't you!?"

"What?" L.L. snorted dismissively. "No, no. It's irreversible. You put her in a purgatory. She needed a reason to atone. That's likely the only way she'll be able to cope with such an overwrought Geass. And no—" He held up his hand to prevent her from interrupting him. "It doesn't matter if it was a lie. Her sin is a lie too."

"B-but . . ." Louise couldn't really argue with his logic. What she did was far worse than the lie that they told Mathilda. She hung her head in frustration.

"Anything else, then?" C.C. prompted again, still far too sweetly. It was too much for Louise.

"Bah! Damn Familiars!" she shouted as she ran out the door and slammed it shut. What she was confronted with was not what she'd been remotely expecting. The Viscount Wardes had his ear pressed against the wall of her room.

"Well?" Louise prompted the Viscount. "Is there something I can help you with? It would certainly be helpful to me if you told me what you were doing." No. She knew what he'd been doing. She wasn't blind. But there could have been a reason. Maybe. The Viscount had never shown himself to be an unsavory man, even if he'd been slightly less savory than she remembered him being.

He responded, "I was worried about you. I heard shouting and thought there might be trouble." It wasn't exactly the most convincing answer, in Louise's honest opinion. But she had some faith in Wardes. Some, but still enough.

"Thank you very much, Wardes, but I assure you that I am fine. I was simply having a heated debate with my Familiars on a personal subject. Forgive me if I disturbed you." Besides, if there was any trouble, her friends were right across the hall, literally a pace away. Still, it was the thought that counted.

"And I'm not a child! Do not coddle me! I can take care of myself!" she declared indignantly. Nice thoughts or not, she didn't need them. Louise was a Vallière, and she intended to live up to her mother's legacy if she could. The Duchess Vallière was a self reliant grown woman, not a 'cute' little girl that needed to be protected by some man.

Wardes winced, hopefully because he understood his mistake. "Yes, mi'lady," he grated out painfully, giving her a small apologetic bow of the head. That was more like it.

"Well and good, then. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be going," she told him as she reached for the doorknob of her friends' room. She turned it, ignoring his miffed expression, and pushed the door open. But when she went to enter, the ship rocked. Kirche was knocked out of bed for the second time that day by the shaking. She rubbed her sore backside and looked around with a dumbfounded expression as she righted herself, looking as if she was going to complain, but she stopped when she noticed Tabitha close her book with a detached sigh. Louise could tell that her diminutive friend was upset by that sigh. Tabitha stood up and fixed her spectacles.

The ship shook violently once again, forcing the group of Mages to brace themselves until the shaking subsided. "Let's go," she announced. No one felt like arguing with Tabitha's no nonsense attitude, it seemed, as they all nodded acceptance and began rushing towards the deck, Flame nipping at their heels.

As they neared the deck, they began to hear muffled shouts and the loud complaints of Tabitha's dragon and Wardes' griffon. Their was the unmistakable crack of cannon fire and as they reached an exit, the din of battle just beyond the door became inescapable.

"We'll do this quickly," Wardes said as he drew his sword-wand. The others followed suit, drawing their weapons, and Tabitha readied her crooked staff.

"On three. One. Two. Three!" he shouted as he forced open the door with a concussive blast of wind. They all rushed into the fray in an explosion of magical force, though none were so explosive as Louise, for obvious reasons.

Once in the thick of it all, Louise was able to observe that their ship was being boarded by pirates. Well, that was a tad ridiculous in her opinion, but it wasn't anything that a few naturally superior Noble Mages couldn't handle. For example, the majority of their ship's crew had been subdued by the vastly overwhelming numbers of the pirates. But then Wardes cut all of the ropes holding the crew with one spell. And Kirche worked with Tabitha to deflect attacks and push attacking pirates off of the sides where they became quick friends with the heavens. And then Louise just started blowing shit up, as she was still entirely frustrated. She couldn't really aim failed spells, but it didn't really matter how good your aim was when you were launching explosions. People blew up, or the ship blew up and they fell through the deck. Either way they still were subdued or killed. It wasn't particularly efficient, and Louise wished that her Geass had some sort of area of affect, but it didn't. And as she didn't plan on making public use of it, she instead opted for blowing people up. She was good at that.

Boom; an arm. Boom; the railing; a pirate lost his footing and slid through the gap and into empty sky. Boom; Headshot! Boom; Double Kill! Killing Spree!

Louise went to cast another, only to realize that the entire remaining pirate crew was kneeling in surrender. At some point Wardes had mounted his griffon and taken over the pirate's unmanned vessel. Louise sighed in relief and massaged her temples—she could feel a headache coming on. It just wasn't her day. Wiping those thoughts away, Louise turned to survey the outcome of their little skirmish.

There were several holes in their craft, but Louise was certain that the captain wouldn't mind if they gave him the pirate's ship as recompense. Their ship's crew quickly busied themselves with tying up the captured pirates and throwing them in the brig. Louise, along with the other Mages, crossed one of the large boarding planks to investigate their attackers. There hadn't been any apparent method to the attack, it hadn't been premeditated. On the contrary, it had been very spur of the moment, which was very contrary to how most pirates worked. They could never be completely sure if the ship they were attacking had any magically capable passengers, as this one had, so they usually held back against smuggling vessels, whose hauls could never quite be guessed. Wardes explained, to Louise's surprise, that the ship they'd been on was in fact smuggling sulphur, one of the key ingredients of gunpowder, and that the captain would likely sell it to whomever was the highest bidder—Albion or Reconquista. Louise decided that they would be selling to Albion whether the Captain wanted to or not.

Louise's little party entered the pirate vessel's cabins only to be confronted by a surprised swabbie in the act of scrubbing the floors.

"Are you alone?" Wardes demanded immediately.

The deck-man nervously shook his head 'no' and pointed to a door to their left with a shaky hand.

"Open it for us."

He meekly did as told and opened the door for them. The din of an ongoing feast was interrupted and all eyes turned to Louise's party as they stepped into the room and brandished their wands.

"By the authority of Her Royal Highness Henrietta de Tristain you are all charged with Piracy during Wartime. This ship is confiscated as evidence. You will come with us."

ODD#I(e)/5,iii;12Aft3178

AN:

Saito's thoughts upon first meeting Wardes in canon:  
"The mustache he had further enhanced his suaveness."

That's just hilarious.

Nothing really to say that hasn't been said before. Don't forget to review. I appreciate all of them. Oh, and Happy Hallowe'en, if that's your thing.


	7. Wish You Were Here

**Everything I Touch**

_Chapter 7_

_Wish You Were Here_

Iona palmed her face as she attempted to overcome her frustration. All had gone fine and dandy until Henrietta had remembered that Prince Tudor wasn't the only one with tucked away love letters. The Princess' own stash wasn't under threat of enemy takeover, though, so she'd decided that it would be okay if she kept them.

And keep them she did! By God, the girl must have had three hundred letters! The Princess had scoured several of the older looking correspondences before throwing them behind her and digging further into the pile. Out of curiosity, Iona had read a few of the correspondences. The older ones were obviously between mischievous friends; they spoke of pranks and plays and punishments and sweets—childhood. But as the letters became progressively newer, they also became progressively less childish; they began touching the subjects of puberty, of higher learning, of love and hate. Somewhere in the middle there was a string of letters that had obviously been practices in writing several languages. Iona read the few that were in Germanian and chuckled at the butchered grammar and syntax.

She skipped the few that were in anything other than Germanian or Tristainian after struggling for half an hour to read a letter written in Gallian, only for it to turn out to be a shopping list that had gotten mixed in by accident. She'd been taught the necessary skills that would be required of her Maiden of Honor should the Princess ever marry a Germanian. She could read and write in both her mother tongue, and what was commonly called the 'uncivil tongue' in Tristain. Either of those were boasts that the majority of the Commoner population wouldn't be able to make, so she was fortunate in that matter. Far more than fortunate, actually, as she would have been jobless if the Princess had been engaged to a man from anywhere but Germania.

Still, she cursed her fortune and proclaimed it a burden, as the Princess was wont to do. That selfsame woman, the to-be ruler of an entire country, was getting on Iona's nerves. She'd joyfully dug through her little pile of remembrances with a smile playing on her lips, but it'd slipped away as soon as she reached the last letter. She'd begun crying halfway through it, and by the time she finished she was curled up in a pitiful ball of doleful hilarity.

Her cries told a tale. Wales had sent it only months ago, but Henrietta had never replied. She couldn't have; there was war and insurrection brewing; she'd been far too busy. And then she'd been engaged and he was probably dying, so it all didn't really matter anymore.

After some hour of muted crying, there came a call through the outer chambers. The Princess was scheduled for something or another that day. Henrietta unfurled herself and got off of her bed at that, looking oddly peaceful.

"Will you be attending?"

"Of course. Isn't it a given?"

"I suppose so." That she did. There really hadn't been any question to the matter. "Shall I draw a bath, then?"

"No. I'm in no mood. I'd likely try something stupid, surrounded by so much water. I'll change and have my hair done."

"And makeup. You've ruined yours." It was peppered with tiny rivulets from her mewling.

She glanced at the body mirror in the corner of the room and trailed her hand down her face. With a weak smile she said, "Yes. That too, I suppose." She turned to Iona again. "But I'll have another do these things for me. You—you'll take these . . . these _things_." She pointed to the pile of letters. "Take them with you, a-and . . ." The Princess looked conflicted, but her features smoothed and it looked as if she'd come to a decision. "Burn them. And this too," she said with finality as she handed Iona the tearstained and crumpled up final letter.

She took the letter without a word and stuffed it into one of her pockets. There was no reason to complain. Her Princess seemed to be moving forward.

"Have them gone by the time my meeting is over," she told the maid before leaving. She bowed to the exiting Royalty before turning back to the large pile of correspondences. It was quite daunting, but she was up to the task.

Iona pulled up her dress, well beyond what was proper, and formed a bowl with it before scooping all of the letters into it from off of the Princess' bed. She sneaked out of Henrietta's bedchambers, candle in hand, through one of the castle's older secret passages. Earth Mages made them easy and relatively common, she mused, so perhaps they shouldn't be called 'secret'. The not-so-secret passage led to a small courtyard behind the castle. When she got there it was empty, which was expected. It could only be reached through passages found in the bedchambers of the Royalty. That was also why it was dirty, as it would require they tell a maid of it's existence if they wanted it cleaned. No one but Henrietta knew that she'd found it, and Iona would be keeping it that way if she could, as she certainly didn't want to be forced into cleaning it. Henrietta was far too kindhearted to make her do that, though, as it was her favourite place for them to make secret girl-talk that she didn't want interrupted.

She'd probably need to have it cleaned soon, however, Iona reflected as she dumped the letters out of their impromptu pouch and set them alight with the candle. They were slow to catch, probably because of some sort of protection spell, but eventually they became a roaring fire. Iona watched them burn and wondered what her Princess would do from then on. She recalled the letter in her pocket after her meandering mind grew bored with that tangent. She went to throw it into the fire with the rest of them, but at the last moment she stopped herself and decided to read it.

Even crumpled up as it was, it was still perfectly legible; Nobles strived to perfect their handwriting at an early age. By the light of Henrietta's burning memories of Wales, Iona read her last:

_Ma __chérie__ Henrietta,_

_How fare you? You asked after me, and I am perhaps not so well, but I worry for you. Your letters have been getting shorter. Again, I worry._

_That rebellion that I told you about has begun to grow, but father says not to fear. The Royals, he says, are naturally superior, and will thus always be victorious. I question that, as it just doesn't seem proper to denounce all other Nobles in such a manner. Do we not already denounce the Common Folk? I'd say as much, but I fear that he would think less of me for it, and I love him far too much to risk such a thing. But to ask such things of you, I have no worries about such a thing. You would forgive me this crime, this treason. Our love is already treasonous, and yet the lady protests not. Ask you of me not whether I make this comparison out of doubt, for it is not so; I am but confused. Perhaps you might shed some light on my scattered thoughts?_

_I know not how to take this, but my magic has become increasingly erratic as of late. The doctors said that I must be sick with something. The priest thinks it an ailment of my soul. He's recommended that I pray on it, but, call me a heretic, I fear that my soul might not be the problem. Have you any ideas? I understand that this is perhaps an unorthodox question, and certainly my heretical questioning of a priest on matters of the soul is unorthodox, and yet I ask you. Henrietta, chère, what think you of my predicament?_

_I have already asked this many a time, but I shall ask again: Would you come away? There is nothing for you in Tristain. They know you, but not as I do. Now, more than ever, with this looming coup, you should be at my side. What could you have as Tristain's Queen that you would lack for if you were Albion's Queen-Consort? I am afraid that I shan't have the will to make it on my own through Sir Oliver Cromwell's attack upon the Noble body. I thank you for your continued support, and once again, as always, return your love. But please, come. I beg that you think on this before replying._

_Always,_

_Wales_

Iona wiped a stray tear from eye as she finished the letter. It was touching, really, how much feeling there was in the thing. She was glad that a Noble's worries were not her own. Still, she had a job to do.

She touched it to the candle before throwing it into the dying fire. She kept an eye on it all for another minute before leaving, once again pondering on how Henrietta's attitude might change.

* * *

The wind blew through Lelouch's hair, sending it flying hither and thither. He didn't pay that any mind, as he was absorbed with what he was seeing. It was apparently taken for granted that the continent of Albion could fly. Lelouch was in no way uncomfortable with the concept of flight, be it through magical or technological means, but it was still unexpected to see an entire continent floating so high above the ocean. Magic was obviously to blame, as the Viscount Wardes had so kindly explained, but it was still a bit fascinating. Apparently the continent was held aloft by windstones, just as all of the flying ships were. He wondered what role the sun and moons actually played in the location of the continent, or if was just happenstance that its movements aligned with those of the celestial bodies.

It was oddly picturesque, Albion. They'd begun approaching it after nightfall, as being beset by pirates does slow one down, but the continent wasn't more than half an hour away when he'd begun watching, C.C. at his side. They could see its mists and fogs shine under the light of the penumbra. It was sometimes called the White Land, as its entire bottom was steepled in clouds at all times. The runoff from the mountain rivers would atomize after hitting the open air and eventually coalesce into thick clouds that would occasionally yield rain.

'That must be something new, C.C. A raining continent.'

'I think so.'

The Captain's bellowing told them that landfall would be in five minutes. They'd been told by the pirates that their home port was in Newcastle, and Wardes had convinced the Captain that they would be landing there so he could arrest the rest of them, else his ship might be blown to bits.

'I really must applaud the man. He's dedicated to his act of loyalty,' C.C. commented. It was true—based on his actions, there was a more than ninety-five percent chance that the Viscounts was a liar and a traitor, as Lelouch calculated.

"We shall see," he murmured back, ignoring C.C.'s comments on how many times he'd said that in his life. She could forgive him his little melodramas.

The approach was uneventful. They moved silently through the foggy night sky and slipped under the continent into a secret port. Wardes threatened a pirate with unspeakable death, torture, and pain if he didn't properly signal that they were returning allies, so of course the man complied, manipulating the lantern signals with a feverish intensity. Men were all the same; do or die, rise or fall. Wardes would paint himself as an Übermensch and the pirate was complacent to function as his last man—so long as status quo was reached, no one would question it.

The return signal shimmered through the fog, and the pirate translated for them, "You have the okay." He twitched nervously and looked as though he feared death, but the Viscount simply had him sent back to the brig. The man panicked as he realized that he would be labeled a traitor by the rest of the men he was to be locked up with, but it only took a flick of Wardes' wand to knock the man out. A couple of sailors dragged the unconscious man away.

Their ships—first the pirate's, and then their own, once it was confirmed safe—slowly started to rise through a large hole in the bottom of the continent, escaping the clouds in favour of a dank and musty cave heavily populated by white moss. It reminded Lelouch of nothing so much as the legendary depictions of padded rooms for housing the suicidal and insane. Fitting.

The Viscount ordered that one of the higher tier pirates be brought out to help them greet the quaymen as they moored the ships to the wooden wharf. It took a bit of impressive engineering to build the wharves, as they were only supported by the ropes that held them aloft above the empty sky. Magic likely played some part in it as well, Lelouch guessed. But it still must have taken more than a little testicular fortitude to actually be the ones that hung them in place and first tested them, so there were brave men in Albion. Far braver than he could call himself, though he considered a risk to oneself to be a major component of bravery, so he was mostly ineligible to begin with. Brave men die and the shrewd live on.

"Greetings, Paris!" the pirate eked out in slightly strangled tones, gaining an odd look from an old man on the wharf. "Luck rests with us, my good friend! Happily we have come across a shipment of sulphur!" His proclamation stirred waves of excited whispers into the waiting dockhands.

"What?! This is most excellent news! Wonderful! A feast, a feast; the King will surely call for a feast! How much sulphur, good man?" the old man, Paris by name, became animated as he responded and began waving his hands excitedly.

"Enough to make enough gunpowder to last every man, I should think," Wardes' hostage answered in kind, a large smile breaking across his face despite his situation. "But enough talk, my friend. Come, we have . . . guests . . . !"

"Guests, you say?" the old man questioned, leaning in. He at last spotted Lelouch and C.C. hanging on the gunwales. Lelouch grinned sardonically and gave a little wave to the old man.

"Wonderful eve' we're having, Paris," he cheekily told the man, which earned him a bewildered look. The older man shook his head before turning back to their hostage.

"Strange company you keep, my friend. Is this all?" he asked, making small talk as the dockhands and the sailors started working to unload the hull full of sulphur. No doubt Louise had thrown a fit when Wardes told her that he would be giving the sulphur to the pirates. And from the disappearance of their ship's Captain, he assumed that he'd thrown a fit at giving it away to the pirates they'd defeated. They were both probably angrily shuffling about their cabins, wondering when Wardes intended to arrest the pirates.

The Viscount Wardes stepped forward. "Nay, my good man. You didn't expect that the new ship was crewless, did you?!" He laughed at his own joke.

"That I did not, uh . . ."

". . . Viscount Jean-Jacques Wards," he filled in.

"A Viscount? Well, good eve' to you, Viscount. I am Paris Chamberlain, wharfmaster of Newcastle. May I be the first to greet you."

"That you are. Thank you."

"Think nothing of it. Simple pleasantries. Now, then, should I take it that you are the Captain of this vessel?"

"I'm afraid not, Mister Paris. I'm but a Viscount out for a sail."

Paris' face contorted with confusion at Wardes' reply. Doubtfully, he said, "Then where is the Captain? And are you alone?"

"Not to fear. The Captain is below deck, as of the moment. He's got a case of the doldrums, I hear. And, as for being alone—" There came a loud bang from the below deck, and soon thereafter Louise stormed onto the deck, pushing her way through the busy deckhands and yelling incoherent anger all the while. "—that would be a 'no'," he finished with a frustrated sigh as he turned to address the approaching girl.

'Smooth,' C.C. drawled.

'Quite.' They both smiled just the tiniest of fractions at their Master's ridiculous attitude.

"Yes, Louise, dear? What can I do for you?" He smiled tightly.

"I demand that this stop this instance! I shan't suffer the indignity another moment!" she announced, producing her wand and pointing it at the Viscount.

'Your theatrics seem to be rubbing off on her, Mister Emperor,' C.C. remarked snidely.

'Better than your laziness, Miss Empress Consort.' His retort silenced her for the moment and he exalted himself in this small victory.

The Viscount's face became stricken with dread at the threat of the offending wand. "W-what, Louise?"

He attempted to maneuver out of the way, but she pointed it back at him once again. "I _said_ I'll take not a lick more of this. I am an ambassador of Her Highness! I will not be accomplice to pirates!" she announced loudly, drawing all eyes to her and driving further panic into the Viscount's eyes. So much for his victory.

'I think I win, then.' C.C. smirked at him.

'Silence, Damnable Witch.' She simply laughed at him in reply.

"Ambassadors?!" Paris called, surprise evident in his voice. "What would Royal Ambassadors want with the last bastion of Albion's Royalty?" Both Louise and Wardes stopped at that.

"Royalty?" Wardes queried, one of those devious smiles that no one seemed to notice spreading across his lips. "Albion's?"

"Why, yes, Viscount Wardes. Surely you know this, if you were sent as ambassadors."

"Of course, of course. A slip of the tongue. Right, Louise? In fact, send for your friends. Have them join us. Was there not to be a feast, Mister Chamberlain?"

The old wharfmaster's face once more grew doubtful as he responded, "Yes, Viscount, I did say that. May I once more welcome you to Albion."

Wardes stepped down the gangplank and gave a large grin before grabbing hold of and shaking Paris' hand. "Glad to be here, Mister Paris! Glad to be here!" Knowing the Viscount's grip, Lelouch could understand the old man's grimace.

* * *

Louise's anger subsided rather quickly when she heard that the 'pirates' were, in fact, men loyal to the Royal Family of Albion. It came as a great relief to her that the gunpowder she'd thought was being funneled into the uprising was actually being given to the very people she'd planned on strong-arming the Captain into selling to anyways, though she had planned to actually let the man make a profit. Wardes had simply pointed his wand at the Captain and said he'd be giving his haul to the 'pirates', lest there be consequences. That still irked Louise, that he would order the man about in such a manner without recompense. Even Commoners deserved _some_ sort of recompense. But it was a minor issue, so she got over it. The problems of Commoners weren't her own.

Anger aside, Louise went to fetch her friends from belowdeck, and together they crossed the gangplank and returned to solid—if still floating—ground. Tabitha and Kirche sent their Familiars to the stables with one of the servants that was running about. Louise saw her Familiars wander into the castle, and even though she and her friends soon followed, they'd disappeared by the time they reached the threshold. Louise considered tracking them down by the buzzing they tended to be surrounded by, but quickly abandoned the thought when she realized that all of the people shuffling about and talking at the feast—the one that Mister Chamberlain had mentioned—were loud enough to drown out any conversation that was more than five steps away.

Surprisingly, however, she heard a summons above the din. "Sir Louise de la Vallière?!" a deep voice boomed. The crowd became quiet for a moment, but when they realized that whatever was happening had nothing to do with them they returned to their chatter. Looking about, she realized that she'd been called by the King, James I Tudor of Albion. He was an old, decrepit King, but he was much loved by his people—however few it was that still supported him, that was. It was for this reason that Louise was able to recognize him on her approach, as, though he'd removed his crown for some reason, he was surrounded by many friends. Louise wished for a brief second that she hadn't left her own friends behind when the man called her, as queerly enough, the situation reminded Louise of the visions that she'd seen before gaining her Geass, but she dismissed those thoughts as she stepped forward.

With a brief, respectful curtsy, she answered, "You called, Your Majesty?"

"None of that, now. I detest that. Now stand up right, young lady. If I can't bow this crooked back of mine, then I shan't be asking that any other does so for me." His informal attitude shocked Louise. She'd never seen a Noble so informal. Perhaps this was the reason that his people loved him, she guessed. It was more likely, in her opinion, though, that in his old age he was allowed certain liberties in the arena of propriety.

"Yes, Your Majesty," she apologized as she stood up. Still, despite his orders, she kept her gaze averted, as though he might have been, she was not above propriety.

"Come now, girl! Don't shame me like that! I may be old, but I'm not blind yet! Look me in the eye. There is time yet, but not enough that we should waste it with useless posturing."

"Time, Your Majesty?"

"Yes, yes, time, girl. Am _I_ not the old one?"

"Y-yes, Your Majesty."

"Then why is it that you can not hear me? If any, should _I_ not be the deaf one? Could it be that you haven't heard yet?" He took a large gulp from what looked like wine, but could have just as easily been broth. Louise realized that it was watered down beer when he burped loudly, causing several of the nearby to tut and snicker, and sending several wafts of his breath her way. She'd never witness such an affront to Nobility! Not only was he drinking some . . . Commoner swill, but he was completely comfortable with doing so.

He set his cup down and looked at her thoughtfully for a moment before speaking, "I suppose you haven't, then. Well, I'll tell you. Newcastle, as you know, is the last royalist bastion left. I should have listened to my son, it seems, and curbed the rebellion when it was young. But anyways, I wander off on tangents in my age. What I mean to tell you, young lady, is that I've received word that Reconquista," he spat the word with palpable disdain, "will be here on the morrow. Late in the morrow, so there is time yet for you to join one of the ships that shall be ferrying away those unwilling or incapable of fighting. I should thank you, I hear that the ship you rode here had enough smuggled sulphur in it's hulls to make enough gunpowder to last each of our men for the entire fight."

"Enough sulphur, Your Majesty?"

"Call me James, or Tudor, but enough of this 'Your Majesty' nonsense."

"W-well, then M-Mister Tudor . . ." Louise could not believe that she was addressing a King so familiarly. ". . . what do you mean enough sulphur? Enough gunpowder? I know there was a lot of it, but how could there have been enough for your men to win a battle? I've heard from Wardes that Reconquista's army is purported to be on the scale of thousands—how would there be enough for all of your men to defeat that many?!"

"_All_ of my men? Just how many men do you think I have? No, don't answer that, I will tell you. Newcastle is stocked with some three hundred fighting men."

"Then how will you win?! To even attempt to do anything but surrender is sure folly!"

"Do not question me, girl!" he boomed, standing up shakily. "My folly is my own, and I do not need the likes of you to tell me of it. Newcastle will fall, but it will fall with some Goddamned honor!"

Louise realized that she'd fallen for the King's amicable conversation and forgotten that he was a King momentarily. How very clever. Perhaps, she decided, this was why he was considered such a formidable monarch.

The old man wobbled before collapsing back into his seat.

"Now, I do believe that you didn't come all the way to Albion to speak of its fall." He snickered ironically. "Unless you have, that is."

"I—I'm afraid not, Mister Tudor."

"Ah, I didn't think so. Then tell me what brings you."

Louise flourished herself in another curtsy as she made her formal introduction. "I've been sent by Her Royal Highness Henrietta de Tristain with a missive for the Prince Tudor."

The King gave a tired sigh. "Another one? At such a time?" he said mysteriously to himself. Louise didn't question him on it; she'd learnt her lesson.

"Well, you can find my son in his room, I'm sure. He's barely left it in the last two month, and even when he does, he does nothing but haunt the halls as some sort of living specter. He's but a shade of himself, as of late. Something's not right with that boy, I swear." That was bizzare news, if anything the King had said _wasn't_ bizzare. Henrietta had always spoken so glowingly of him.

"Well, thank you for telling me where to find him, then."

"Think nothing of it, Sir Vallière. I'm already in your debt for the sulphur—it's the least I could do. And I might very well be even further in your debt if what you carry does anything to lift my son's spirit, so don't discount yourself so easily. Is there anything else that you might ask of me, that I might repay you?"

Again with Royalty trying to give her something?! No! Not this time! "I'm fine, Mister Tudor, but thank you very much for the offer."

"Too bad then . . . Well, whilst you're here, please enjoy the feast. It's the very best of the best, but in an attempt to regain my son's goodwill I've made it all available to every loyal man, woman, or child, be they Common or Noble, so you'd best enjoy it before it's all gone." That was a tad wasteful, but the man did expect to be dead before the next night, so she supposed that it was all that could be done to maintain morale.

"Of course, Mister Tudor." Louise took his offer of the feast as being dismissed, so she gave the man another curtsy before turning to leave. She highly doubted that she would enjoy the festivities, though. It was disgusting to her how all of the people in the room just intended to die, even if Louise fully understood a Noble's honor. In her mind, it was nothing but wasteful.

Louise returned to find her friends seated. Tabitha was attempting to read one of her books, and Kirche was dutifully poking and prodding the girl in her personal boredom.

"Am I interrupting something, Zerbst?" she said. Kirche turned to her voice, but in so doing lost her balance and ended up sprawled on the floor with Tabitha pinned under her.

"It seems that I have. I'll check back later, then. Have fun, you two." Her wit made Kirche realize the scandalous position she was in, so she abruptly shot off of a heavily blushing Tabitha with a blush of her own. Louise could understand their foul minds, for she'd seen; Tabitha's books weren't all so innocent, especially when she was actually borrowing from Kirche.

"Shush, Vallière! You know it's not what it looked like," Kirche objected.

"Ah, a shame . . ." Louise replied dramatically, "but I suppose that you're right."

"Damn right I'm right. Now what just happened to you, and what does it have to do with the Viscount?"

"Well, you see—wait, the Viscount? What does Wardes have to do with this?" Beyond the obvious fact that—even if they'd been ignoring him a bit—he was an integral member of their envoy, that was.

"You didn't see? The Viscount is talking to the King as of right this very moment, you twit."

"What?" Louise asked dumbly, twirling about to scan the crowd.

"There," Tabitha pointed the way for her with her staff, showing Louise that the Viscount was escorting the the King on a small walk. Louise caught the tail end of their conversation, enough to see Wardes smile widely and vigorously shake the monarch's proffered hand before departing.

". . . Thanks, Tabby. But to answer your question Kirche: I have no idea . . ."

". . . as per usual," Kirche interjected, but Louise took it gracefully.

"Hush. Now, as I was saying: I haven't a clue what shady business the Viscount is up to, and it's really none of my concern at the moment. What is of import, however, is that I now know where we can find, or at least where we probably should be able to find, the Prince."

Kirche puffed her cheeks. "You're no fun."

"Now is not fun-time. Now come along, before that old guy's eyes fall out." Louise pointed to a decrepit old man sleazily eyeing the watermelons strapped to her friend's chest.

"W-what?!" Kirche whispered furiously whilst attempting to shield her bosom from view. "How long was he staring before you sought fit to mention it?!"

"I wasn't going to say anything at all, but you pushed me. Now let's go."

"Y-yeah."

Louise asked if Tabitha wanted to come, but she shook her head no and waved her book as if to say to go on without her. She understood her quiet friend well enough to not mind, so she just went back to pushing Kirche out of the room.

Once they were safely in the empty halls, Kirche turned to her. "So, where are we headed, _Sir_ Louise?"

"The King said that the Prince is likely holed up in his room."

". . . Which would be where, exactly? I surely don't know the way."

"But I do. I've been here before."

"Oh? And why is that? The Vallière's aren't _that_ powerful, to deal with Kings." Kirche liked to stress how 'little' power Louise's family had— almost as if she thought it meant anything to her.

"I was a Royal Playmate. We've already gone over this, why do I have to explain it to you again?"

"Alright, alright, so I forgot. Lead the way, Miss Playmate."

She simply ignored Kirche, in her mind labeling her a prissy sack a breast fat to assuage her hurt pride. She heard a snicker at that that wasn't her own, but she couldn't locate any direction from whence it might have originated but her very mind. That wasn't unusual, though, so she skipped over it and went on lead Kirche through the quiet of Newcastle's lonely halls.

"Here," Louise indicated a spot in the wall before quietly pushing it.

"This is not a door, Louise," Kirche pointed out with what could have been construed as anything between mocking and genuine concern. If Louise's instincts had any thought on the matter, it was probably both.

"Yes, but is can be." The magic finally activated and the section of the wall they'd been huddled before finally activated.

"Well, I can honestly say that that was unexpected."

"Yes, well . . . the Prince and Princess made a formidable mischief team. It would only follow logic that they were eventually confined to the room a great many times for their misdeeds. They eventually got sick of it and teamed up to make this passage," she explained as they slipped through the passage. The door had closed behind them, shutting out the light, which apparently drove Kirche to enough fear to grab on to her.

Louise jerked her arm away from her friend's grip. "Enough of that, now. It's only dark. Get over it. Just walk forwards."

Despite her request, however, Kirche just went on and grabbed back onto her. "I don't like the dark. I have my reasons."

Even though there was no way that she would have been able to see it in the dark, Louise still palmed her face and shook her head. "Whatever. Let's go."

After that, all was quiet as they walked through the passage, at least until Kirche nervously asked, "So . . . how much longer?"

"We're just about—" Louise cut off as she heard voices through the wall some distance in front of them. "We're here. It's a shorter walk than I remember."

"Longer legs will do that, that is if you've grown at all."

"Har, har, har. Very humorous. But quiet now—I hear talking in the other room."

"You're not suggesting we eavesdrop on Royalty, are you?!"

"Yes, yes I am. The King said that his son hasn't been particularly sociable as of late, as if something were wrong with him. I'm a bit worried—he's a good guy."

"You don't like him, do you?"

"What? No. He's not to my taste."

"Oh, you have a taste, do you?"

"Shut it," Louise retorted. With that, she shoved her ear against the wall.

* * *

Wales was a very boring, nigh insane gentleman. C.C. had come to this conclusion after watching the boy for some twenty minutes, but the signs had been obvious since the moment he'd answered the door with his wand clinched between his teeth like it was some sort of trumped up tooth pick. From what she'd learned of Halkeginia's magic, that was one of the most dangerous things a Mage could do—having his own weapon pointed at himself. Then there was the fact that she'd known long before that bit, the part about how opening your door to a stranger with no form of protection was an easy way for those of high profile to find themselves assassinated. She'd asked him as much as she settled down, and he'd gone into a rather lengthy explanation that basically boiled down to: 'his magic wasn't working anymore, but nothing really mattered to him anymore so why should that?'

And it really didn't matter to her, so C.C. didn't push the matter. Maybe it mattered to her Master, but she hadn't popped from behind the wall to say so, if it that was it. But after the explanation he'd simply busied himself with reading letters and mystical texts and _ignoring her_. That just hadn't been acceptable! No, no, no, no, no.

So she'd busied herself teasing the man. He was of a particularly resilient type, but she was on the verge of breaking his concentration. It was a relatively simple plan, really; it involved mainly teasing. And, though their connection was weak at best, it also involved showing what she was seeing to Louise.

C.C. grinned wickedly as she through the wall heard her Master give another poorly stifled petrified cough at her latest action. C.C. was currently in nothing but her underthings and lounging upon the mad Prince's back with her lips to his ear, whispering ever-so-devilishly. It sent a shiver down the poor boy's back—the first of the day. Up to this point he'd been nothing if not a chaste hero, but it was now obvious that she was affecting him far deeper than he'd so-far shown.

She watched a bead of sweat slowly form and begin sluicing down his forehead, only to be caught in his eye. He hesitated almost imperceptibly before deciding to hold still, lest he offend her by unneeded motion, but it cost him nonetheless when he blinked it from his eye and it plopped loudly onto what he was reading.

He groaned with frustration at the blemished, and no doubt rather valuable, text. "Woman, nymph, witch, whatever you call yourself—what is it that I can do for you?"

"Oh? Are you sure you would-n't-ra-ther. Ask. Me. For. Something?" she breathed huskily, sending another wave of shivers down his spine and another volley of sputters from behind the wall.

"I—I think not, t-temptress." Perhaps he wasn't so boring after all. But then, nearly anybody could be broken in this way.

"You think so?"

"Yes—no, I mean—gah! What do you want?!"

"What if I where to say that I want what you want? What would that mean?"

"What does any of it mean?!"

"'What does it mean?' he asks, as if it really means anything at all," she mimed.

He made to bite back with a no doubt caustic remark, but she stopped him by turning about, pushing her chest into his back.

"You don't really care what any of it means, do you? Not so long as you get what you want."

The Prince gasped; perhaps at what he felt, perhaps at what she said. "But I want nothing from you. In fact, I would be glad to do whatever it is you'd like."

"Oh? Are you so sure?"

Wales gulped loudly, no doubt regretting chivalry. "Within reason," he added thickly.

"Ah, pooh. And I'd thought I'd had you. Well, there's always that," she made sure to sound extra disappointed. He looked as if he would turn from his reading to repent his amendment, but she interrupted anything he might have had in mind with her harsh reply, "You should be careful with your words, Heighness. Words can be powerful."

"My words hold no magic, woman. I've told you this before."

She decided she was bored with the boy's idiocy and went to stand back up. "There's more to power than the supernatural," she said as she began getting dressed again.

Her little Master finally came through the wall passage, tailed by a semi-frightened version of Kirche who was so tightly clutched to Louise that it was difficult to tell where her Master's blushing face ended and Kirche's reddish hair began.

"Oh, now that's new," C.C. said, her tone neutral once again.

Kirche chuckled perversely, eyes flickering from the Prince lying on the floor to C.C. as she finished buttoning up her blouse. "Taking a liking to princes, are you?"

C.C. smirked as she opened the door to the hall. "I much prefer Emperors, I'm afraid."

She closed the door as Louise started to ask how she got through security to the Royal wing.

'It's a secret of the trade.'

* * *

Wales glanced up from his book when he noticed that strange and infernal woman leave, only for her to be replaced by what appeared to be schoolchildren. He hadn't the interest nor the time to waste on them even if they had been interesting, however, so his gaze did not linger upon them. They would only serve to distract him if he gave them any mind. He was fortunately blessed with extreme talent when it came to focusing on his work, so he hunkered down to finish his studies. He was in a small hurry—he had to be, if he wished to have his spell researched and executed before the castle was overwhelmed, with enough leeway with time that, if it should fail the first time, he might be able of attempting it again.

"Beg pardon, Your Highness," one of the children—the shorter one—said, interrupting his line of thought. He ignored her as best he could and continued reading and scanning diagrams.

"Maybe he didn't hear you, Louise. If you try again . . . ?" the other stranger in his room whispered to the first. It was impossible that he wouldn't have heard it, though, quiet as it was.

"Uh . . . you're probably right. Well . . . _ahem_," the child shifted from whispering back to how she'd first spoken. "We beg you pardon us in asking for a moment of your time, Your Highness." Louder; a bit higher pitched; definitely a slight nuisance.

"Go away. I can't be bothered at the moment," he dismissed them with a wave of his hand before returning it to propping up his head.

"But . . . bu—Your Highness . . ." A welcomed pause. He flipped a page in his book and continued reading. It was a particularly interesting page; he felt that he was very near the end of his research.

Alas, it was almost not meant to be. "There is a message, Prince Tudor!" He would never finish if all he had were interruptions.

"I don't care. Tell my father I'm much afflicted and dare not leave my chambers, lest I might exacerbate my condition and die an early death." Yes, early by so many hours and minutes. He couldn't imagine a worse fate! _Never!_ The old man was such a nag.

"He's afflicted by madness," the older girl tittered.

"Kirche! How dare you!" the younger girl shrieked. She became quiet and terse, likely thinking that he couldn't hear such low tones, "And what if he really is mad, like the King said. What would you do then?! He could have you killed for that!" Oh, that was new. His father thought he was insane? Well, he could see how someone might construe such a thing from his recent actions, but it was hardly true. He was no more insane than any other man had ever been, in his honest opinion.

He flipped another page, but it wasn't of any interest to him, as the subject changed, so he shut the book and quickly grabbed another—the last in the stack he'd been working through. It proved to be more in line with what he'd been searching for, and quickly he resumed reading.

"I apologize for the interruption, Your Highness. And please forgive her rudeness; she can't help being brutish. She's Germanian, you see." The taller girl squawked and huffed vehement indignation. By the sound of it, the shorter girl shut her up by some forceful means. "Shush, Kirche," she bit, but there were only more muffled yelps in reply.

"Shoo; begone!" They were getting on his nerves—the few he still had.

"I—I'm sorry, Prince Tudor, but I cannot! Please excuse my abruptness, but we were not sent by your father!"

He couldn't believe how problematic his past hour had been. Women just barging into his chambers as if it was common, questioning his choice of toothpicks and trying to seduce him, and . . . whatever it was that these two schoolgirls were up to. To hell with it, he thought as he sat up and looked at them a second time, putting his book aside.

The shorter girl was definitely familiar. She was probably lying about not having spoken to his father. He didn't recognize her barbarian friend, though she looked as if she wished to know him.

"Well? I'm listening."

He frightened the two of them by speaking, causing them to jump and pale ever so slightly. He loved using his Royal Voice to do things like that.

"Ah . . . Uh . . . Why were we here?" they scrambled to remember in an almost comical manner. "Aha! Yes, Your Royal Highness Prince Wales Tudor, I am Her Royal Highness' Knight Scholar Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, and this is my Germanian body, Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt Zerbst."

Those names were familiar for some reason. "So you were sent by some Lowland Princess? What is it that you seek?" He suspected that it was funding or something equally petty.

"Princess Henrietta de Tristain." The girl smirked.

Of course she smirked. She knew the name meant more than something to him. But then again, anybody who wasn't an idiot knew that.

He didn't trust her. Especially not with a claim like that.

"What a pleasant surprise!" Falsifying emotions and their outward displays was basic for anybody who'd grown up in a court.

"I'm glad to hear you think so, Highness." Very glad, no doubt.

"Of course you are! Now, then; what did the Princess ask of you—and of me?"

The girl quieted and stilled herself, smoothing her excited exterior, no doubt to match her inner serenity. "There is a letter," she spoke carefully, but still his hand instantly shot up to the pocket in which Henrietta's last letter, a worn and creased parchment months old, sat. He lightly gripped the fragile papers for comfort, quietly balling it up, before relaxing his grip and smoothing it back as it had been and withdrawing his hand. He plucked his wand from his teeth and carefully slipped it into a defensible grip.

"I do not know how you know of such a thing, but you had best have an explanation, a _good one_, or Cromwell's men will spot your tarred head on a pike when he marches on Newcastle."

"I told you he was mad, Loui—" the taller girl, Kirche, commented.

"—silent, you." She stiffened and nodded.

He waved his useless wand at the little Knight Scholar, motioning her to continue. She gulped and and nodded gravely.

"The Princess is engaged, to be wed to the Germanian—"

"Yes, I've heard. Germanian alliance, political marriage, I've heard it all. I'm not so far gone that I don't grasp the threads of news that flutter up to Albion ad try to make sense of the world; every man does that. What's it have to do with me, and Henri?"

"Henri?"

He'd slipped. He shouldn't have been so informal. "Princess Henrietta."

"_Ah._ She fears that, should your letter fall into the hand's of Cromwell's men upon the fall of Newcastle and your brief demise—" She'd thought of that, had she? "—that any and all correspondences that you have in your possession, most of which make plain your incestuous dealings—" _Forgive me, Brimir, for I have sinned._ "—would paint her as unfit for marriage."

"I . . . see." She feared that Germania would withdraw support if the marriage did not occur, and without the barbarian people's support, that her own people would be at risk of Reconquista takeover. She was always one to do what her people needed of her.

But he didn't believe the story. He recalled a night spent together and a promise made by the mystic waters of the great Ragdorian lake Water Spirit. That night—those memories—

—He didn't believe this girl.

"Have you any proof of your claims, girl?" He tightened his grip on the wand.

"N-no, not on me."

"Then—"

"—But, please, Your Highness!" she interrupted him, sparing her some few seconds of life.

"What?"

The girl, Louise, panted slightly. A bead of sweat slid down her nose and dripped down, splattering on the rug they were standing on. She watched it fall before answering him, "I don't have any physical proof; not on me, at least . . . But . . . I know the Princess, and I know that you know her. You know that she would do this, please hand it over. She's counting on you."

He doubted that. He highly doubted that. She would never renege on their promise . . .

But . . . dammit, he couldn't be completely sure. Dammit. Dammit.

"Dammit. Dammit. Dammit," he muttered. "Go! Get out of here! I won't have you killed so long as you get out of my sights!" There wasn't really any point in having them killed anyways—he'd be dead himself soon enough. But dammit if he needed any complications to his life in his last hours.

Louise looked as if she'd protest, but he focused his wand and pointed it at her eye. It hovered an inch away—he could literally skewer her to death with it if he wished. But that wasn't his prerogative. He didn't believe them, but he couldn't kill them in cold blood without being sure they were ill-intentioned.

He nodded to the part of the wall the familiar looking girl and her foreign friend had come out of. She got the message and tapped on the brick that served as the trigger. He backed them into the narrow passage after it groaned open, and he shoved his dresser in front of the wall after it shut.

A sigh escaped his lips as he settled back down to reading. It took him some hour or two of reading before he came across the last portion that he needed for his theory. It was a section on the greatest desire of the participant. He closed the book, shelving it behind the others on the bookcase. Blasphemous was a common theme for him as of late, and yet if this worked—

"—I'm damned anyways, no point worrying about a little Black Magic." He dusted himself off before bending down and picking up the rug. He uncovered an array of magical diagrams scrawled with necromantic figures.

"I'll see you again soon, Ciri."

ODD#I(e)/5,iii;67Aft3178

AN:

I didn't make any textual edits, but I did finally get around to using em dashes instead of hyphens when proper, so I fixed the hyphens in the earlier chapters. And I realize that the way I write ellipses has changed as I've toyed with it, so I've edited the earlier chapters to be consistent with my recent method. Just an FYI. I prefer it this way, I think, but don't be afraid to tell me if you don't.

I keep forgetting to mention this, but I've lowered the rating to T. Should anybody at any time find that the rating should be raised, feel free to inform me.

Thank you very much to the kind Anon that left many so many wonderful reviews. You helped me find my muse in my very, very holiday when I'd thought there was none to be found.

I hope that each of you has a Happy Holiday, regardless of what you may celebrate. Consider this my gift to all of you!

ETA: So I noticed that when I updated the older chapters I lost my scene breaks. I've edited them back in, but if I missed any of them and you notice this, please tell me. My apologies for any inconveniences.


	8. Небо У Наших Ніг

**Everything I Touch**

_Chapter 8_

_Небо У Наших Ніг  
_

With a tuck and a sigh, Henrietta de Tristain was put in the closet in exchange for something less formal. She emerged with a smile.

"You're feeling better, I take it, Princess?" said Iona, as she followed the young Royal out of the closet.

"Not so formal, Io!" It was always cute, Iona's response to that pet name. She hated it so obviously, and her eyes tightened, but she said nothing. "You know me better than that! We're friends aren't we?" Weren't they?

"Of course, Princess Henrietta."

"And didn't you just see? I put away the court robes." She gestured to the plainer, if still fine, garb she wore when appearances didn't need to be kept. Who would want to wear a stuffy dress and tight corset all day? She'd wear loose pants and a loose shirt any time she had to be dressed, if she could! "I am Henri the Rugged Smile! Daring adventurer!" She flourished her wand and struck a pose! "Wooer of men _and_ women!" She grabbed her stoic Maiden of Honour around the waist and dipped dramatically! She'd forgo wearing anything at all, if it were allowed! "The wetter of lips and bringer of ice water!" Finally, she twisted her wrist and filled a nearby cup with water, handing it to Iona.

"Of course, Princess Henrietta." Iona took a polite sip before setting the cup back down. "I was the one who dressed you."

"That you were!" Henrietta's cheeriness seemed to have affected Iona enough that she cracked a smile of her own.

"Can I get a thank you?" Iona asked rhetorically. It gave Henrietta an idea!

"Thank you!" she said, surprising the Maid into silence. Henrietta reflected that being her Maiden of Honour was a rather thankless job.

"Well . . ." She poked Iona in the nose. "Thanks. A lot. I don't know what I'd do without you." She'd never have been able to get rid of all those letters on her own, that's what.

Iona smiled again. "Maybe you'd die. You'd never even be able to dress yourself." Now that was just mean!

"Hey! Don't make me all indignant when I'm being nice. That's unladylike!"

"Of course, Princess." Iona stifled a giggle.

Henrietta enjoyed the moment of company, feeling very free. She'd been so tied up inside, but Iona was both a good Maiden of Honour and friend, and Louise's comments had been quite sharp; they really underlined things that she hadn't wanted to face. But she was the Princess, and she had to try. Stiff upper lip, as her father used to call it.

"Now . . ." She opened the escape passage next to her bed. ". . . I'll be back soon enough. Though—are you sure you wouldn't want to come with me? The city is so much more exciting than these dusty old halls."

"I'll have you know that I know several maids that would be insulted at your calling the halls they work day and night to keep clean _for you_ dusty." Iona didn't sound nearly as peeved as a reply like that should warrant. "And no."

"But—"

"—nothing. But nothing. I spent plenty of my life in the slums and my memories of them are not fond. Unless you need something, I'd like to stay here, where I'm marginally safe. Unless you're asking this of me as part of my duties?" _There_ was the anger she'd been expecting.

"N-no. Feel free to stay, if you'd like." She'd really wanted to spend the day with Iona, as thanks. Maybe she could get her a gift whilst she was out. That would be nice.

She stepped through quickly to avoid her Maiden's ire and preserve her good mood. Henrietta turned to head for the exit, cursing that she'd run out without a candle. She really couldn't risk performing any magic, even a little floating flame—someone might notice magic coming from somewhere odd in the castle, or she might trip an old ward—so she began to walk with her hand to the damp, rough-hewn wall. That was the secret to this passage. You had to keep your right hand on the wall to find your way through the dark, no matter if your were entering or exiting. Just the tiniest bit of light would have prevented the magic from activating, thus her desire for a candle, but as she didn't have one, she simply kept going forwards.

It wasn't a long or particularly exciting walk. Just the opposite, really. But her desire to be in the city made it feel like quite a long one. Still, like all other walks, it ended and she was outside in a small courtyard with a small porcelain fountain just off of the castle's grounds, in the city. The courtyard could be left through a door that opened in an alley of one of the poorer slums, the exit concealed by the clever work of some Earth Mage whose name had died with time. It was poor and squalid on the outside, but in the courtyard, it was nothing but splendid white marble.

She'd loved the place since she found it as a child. It was the perfect place to run away from parents and teachers and responsibilities. And it . . . had a huge pile of ash in it.

"Did she . . . ?"

Henrietta bent down and sifted a handful of the ash in her hands. Little flecks of paper that hadn't burned drifted out of her open palm.

She had.

She got up carefully and dusted her hands off on her trousers. She fixed her hair back behind her ears, smudging ash on her face in the process.

And then she kicked the pile. And stomped on it. And cried just a bit. And then laughed, really quite loudly, and kicked and stomped on it some more, until it was all sloppily pushed into a corner and ash stung her eyes.

She was forced to rinse herself in the fountain, though only a little, as, on second thought, looking clean where the door lead could probably get her mugged. She turned from looking at her slightly less ashen reflection in the now ashen water, prepared to wander off into the nightlife.

Or a big green portal. That worked too.

* * *

It was like being reeled in by a hook caught fast to your soul. She felt that to even try to resist such a tempest of power would shred her very essence and leave her body a lifeless husk, and yet she thought all of this after it was over, as no time to think was provided for or felt whilst it was happening. It was over in less than the blink of an eye, and yet all at once she felt like some immeasurable stretch of time had been taken from her life.

But, as has been stated, these conflicting thoughts and realizations came to her in less time than it to to blink. Still, she blinked.

She blinked, and her vision was no longer overwhelmed by bizarre light. She even had to blink a couple more times for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

_'Blink', 'blink', 'blink'!_

The room was certainly not her courtyard, but it was very familiar, in an odd way. It was completely messy, with odd things strewn recklessly about the floor and on the furniture, but for a clearing about where she stood carefully taking in the room with an abstracted look.

The candles that half-lit the room were half-melted, and the half-chaotic mess on the floor seemed to have a half-method about it. A closer look showed that there were little spots scattered around the room where you could place your feet without crushing anything, like stepping-stones across a river, only . . . less idyllic.

But . . . a closer look showed . . .

Those bookcases.

That mirror.

Those scattered clothes.

That huddled figure staring at her menacingly . . .

It couldn't be. But—but . . . it must be. But, then . . . There was magic—no, none that she could detect. But . . . an elaborate ruse—no, it was far too elaborate and realistic. It was . . .

"Y-you!" the hooded man barked at her, shakily leveling a half-worn wand covered in wax-, grease-, and ink-stains at her. "Are you some sort of messenger?!"

A messenger? No . . . what? She shook her head in confusion.

"Well, you can't take me away! I'm not going just yet!"

This man was mad. "No, I'm not a—"

"Lies! You cannot deceive me, foul Demon! You can't have me until I have! . . . I'm not going until I see Ciroth again . . ."

Wait. Ciroth? So—

"—I was right. It is you." She took a step forward.

The man, who she was almost entirely sure must be Wales took a step back, tripping over the mess on his floor and falling on his back.

"Ack!" he yelped in surprise before leveling his wand at her once again, almost desperately. That didn't suit Wales.

She smiled and took another step forward.

The ragged man who certainly didn't act very much like Wales _'eeped'_ and scrambled backwards over dirty cloths and tomes.

"Stay back, Demon!" he said shakily, without any conviction or stopping force.

Ignoring his admittedly befuddling reaction, Henrietta continued walking towards the man until there was no more than half a pace between then. She squatted down, resting her elbows on her knees and cupping her chin thoughtfully.

He continued to blubber oddly.

That was odd. Was he possessed? Or insane?

"W-who are you? What d-do you want, O Spirit?"

Spirit? O Spirit? Or, for the matter, Demon, and a foul one at that? His vocabulary was very Wales, if nothing else fit; her Prince had always read far too many old books. But did he really not recognize her? It had been . . . months, yes. But she thought it took more than months to forget a face. She could certainly see it now—she recognized his eyes, if they were a bit . . . mad, and though it was poorly concealed and maintained, she recognized his disheveled blond locks.

"Wales?" She couldn't help the bitterness from seeping in. He didn't even recognize her, and she'd spent so long pining after him.

He blinked and became board stiff. He looked catatonic, but he still responded after staring at her intently for a good while. "Henri?" he said tentatively.

"The one and only. And I'd thought you'd forgot." His face was immediately overwrought with recognition.

"B—but . . . ! That's not fair! You're not Ciroth! You're not!" That mad look to his eyes clouded over just a bit more. It was beginning to frighten her. She edged back half a step.

"R-right again."

"It was supposed to be _Ciri!_ Not . . . not . . . You!" The look waned once more as he shouted 'you'. "Henri?" he whispered coarsely. "Henrietta?"

She tried to edge back another half-step. He wasn't having that, however.

"You! Henrietta!" He lunged at her.

And he kissed her—hot on the lips. His were dry and cracked, and they had raw spots worn in from chewing them when he wasn't chewing his wand; it was hot in that way, arid would be a better word, but you can't call a kiss arid. But it was a forceful, needy kiss, and she had no real choice but to give in and return it.

And then just as suddenly as it had began, it had ended, and when she had her wits back about her, she immediately and forcefully pushed herself up and away from him.

She touched her lips, already feeling the bruise that would no doubt show itself soon enough.

And then she backhanded him before taking another step back for good measure.

"Wha?" Wales held his face gingerly as he stood up out of the clutter, looking on her in open confusion.

"No! No! I was—I was _over_ you! You're going to _die_ and I'm going to get _married_, and everything was going to _work!_"

"H-Henri?"

"No! Henrietta! It's Henrietta!"

"Henrietta, then . . ."

"Where am I? I'm not in Newcastle, am I? I can't _die!_ I don't want to _**die!**_"

"Y-you knew?"

"Of course I knew! Everybody knows. That's why I sent Louise!"

At the mention of Louise, the Prince flinched.

"Louise!? Where's Louise? You've seen her, haven't you?"

He nodded once. "J-just now. I—I sent her off. The girl was asking for my private things. And without any proof!"

Henrietta glared sharply at the Prince, fighting the urge to slap him once more. She realized that she'd dumbly forgotten to give Louise the ring—the one perched on her finger still, but . . . to call their messages his private things was almost pitiable. He should have known better, or recognized Louise from her descriptions, or . . . or _something._

And then it started to burn, and that feeling of seeping power she'd had when she'd come here came back with a vengeance. And then it multiplied, and it seared, and it burned, and she smelled her flesh melt as she fell to the floor in shock. And shock. And shock. After shock. After shock.

Her heart convulsed wildly as what had before been a feeling in her soul manifested itself largely in the physical realm. On her tender chest. And it burned. She tried to cry out for help, and she felt Wales rush to her side, but it helped for nothing. She roiled in anguish, and the safe harbour he tried to provide was completely useless against the storm. Lightning cracked her chest, and thunder rumbled loudly within her head, creating a throbbing that beat in time to every sound of her body that she'd been unaware of. Her choked breaths crashed like symbols, her stomach roiled like storms, and her heart—her Heart, it thrummed with the might of gods, threatening to burst her eardrums.

And then it was over, and she was left with nothing but the aftershock. The world wasn't on fire, and the orchestra in her mind decrescendoed to a quiet, annoying, lively buzz in the back of her ear.

They cried together for some while; him because he was afraid, and her because she felt like she'd been subjected to God's torture.

She wiped her eyes and runny nose on her sleeve. She sighed. She tried to catch her breath. It didn't work.

Wales looked at her in askance. She sighed again.

"I . . . Ah . . ." She tried to swallow. "Thank you." She stood back up with his support.

"What was that?"

"I'm not really—" She stopped when she started to register how her body felt. She pinpointed the itch.

Shamelessly, she tugged out her collar and tried to gaze down. Nothing.

"H-Henri!" Wales blushed for some reason. They'd grown up together, certainly he'd seen her nude at some point? Other things took precedence over shame.

She lifted her shirt up from the bottom and turned to the mirror, pushing up slightly for a better look. Perhaps that wasn't her best idea, as the act of drawing up her breasts stretched her freshly branded skin.

She was branded. Like a cow.

"What. Is. _**THIS**__**?**_" She snatched Wales, who'd been pointedly 'not looking', by the scruff and forced him to look.

"Ahhh . . . . . . . ummm . . . they—uhhh, they a-appear to b-be runes."

"Yes, they do." It was so, so, so difficult to keep an even voice. Her chest was still throbbing and burning. "And what are runes doing on my chest?"

"Th-they appear to m-mark you as a familiar."

She smiled at him.

"And what just were you trying to do that pulled me into this ridiculous situation?"

"T-trying to—to resummon Ciroth."

"Ciroth? Your _dead_ familiar that you swore to _never_ summon again?"

He nodded sharply and held his breath.

"And . . . ?"

". . ."

"What was that? I didn't hear you."

". . ."

_"Say it aloud, Dammit!"_

"Y-y-you appear to be my familiar."

"That's right, I do, don't I?"

He nodded sharply. She wouldn't be having that.

"Say it aloud."

"Y-yes," he said timidly.

She didn't like the way it sounded, and she was far beyond any level of measurable upset. She gave him her best right hook, right in the jaw, sending him sprawling. And then she took out her wand and healed him before doing it again. She healed him once more before grabbing him off the ground and standing him up.

"Please tell me you can fix this."

He shook his head, but remained silent.

"Goddammit all to Hell!" she vented her frustration as best she could. Wales could very well die, despite her healing, if she continued to beat him.

Henrietta grabbed a handful of her sweaty hair and tugged. "What's happened to you? You look a mess. Your room looks a mess. You tried to _summon the dead._" That was heresy! That was borderline _evil_.

"I—I . . ." He shuddered. "Henrietta! I'm going to _die! _And my magic _isn't working right anymore. _And I—"

"You?"

"—I was afraid of dying _alone._" A castle full of people and he thought he was alone?

And yet . . . his tone, his voice. It was so very _sad_, and it sounded so _real_. And she could do nothing for him, because now they were both going to die.

He seemed to understand what she was thinking. "No! No! You don't have to die! There's a ship, you can escape!"

Goddamn his kindness. She was supposed to be _over_ him. "And what for? For you to die, and let the letter fall into Cromwell's hands? I'd just as soon die with you—it might even make my country look just a bit better, faithfulness and all." Like polishing a shit. It could be done, but who wants a ball of crap, no matter the form? Her people would still be condemned.

"No! You _must_ escape! I can't bear the thought of you dying needlessly."

"Then come with me. If you stay here, you'll die just as needlessly."

He struggled visibly before shaking his head. "No, I have to stay. The Tudors must go down in history as having fought Nobly to the end."

"History is written by the winners; the Tudors will go down as having been too stupid to save their own hides and blinded by tradition and foolish pride." The cold facts of life were never pleasant, but sometimes they needed to be said.

But they didn't always work. "No, still. My men need me."

". . . Please, don't make me beg." Damn his loyalty.

"No, I cannot."

Damn his infernal, unshakable loyalty.

"Then give me the letter, and you can die cold and alone for you men."

His face scrunched up, hurt.

"I can't! It's—it's the only thing left I have of you." Desperation looked so terrible on him. But it made her pity him. She hated it.

"Wales." She tried to be firm.

"No!" his answer echoed hollowly between them, as if they were more than just a step apart.

She reached for his hand, but he recoiled. She redoubled her efforts and caught a hold of him. And then she kissed him. Just a peck on the lips. She knew that anything more would have been superficial and cold, coming from her in such a mood, and even yet, it was forceful and unpleasant. Still, it was enough; he was stunned. She reached into his coat and tugged out the letter. He tried to intercept her hand, but she gave him another peck and weaved smoothly out of his reach.

"Will that be enough?" It was a simple question.

His hand glided to his lips and he nodded, gaping mutely. It would do, or not. It didn't matter a whit to her, and he knew it. Not at all. Not a single whit. None. She would deny it to the ends of the map and beyond the far side of the heavens, and she didn't have any tears in her eyes whatsoever. It was just water leftover from the fountain. She made sure to rub it away, though, so he wouldn't notice.

She turned about, searching to find her directions, before slinking away from the stunned Prince. She found the old escape tunnel they'd made, well, one of them, and quietly slipped in, closing the magic door behind her.

She burned the letter right then and there before exiting the smokey passage and heading towards where she knew the docks to be.

Being Princess just wasn't worth the work, sometimes.

* * *

Louise and Kirche exited the same passage half an hour before it would be smokey, but there was still an undeniable heat to the place, mostly attributed to a fuming Louise. And there wasn't ever a time when Kirche wasn't smoldering about something or someone, so they were both quite intense, almost red in the face.

"I'm beginning to seriously hate that man," Louise grumbled. Kirche seemed to agree, as she kicked a wall. Or tried to, anyways; she stubbed her toe and hopped about, waving her foot in the air. It was a rather humorous moment rendered meaningless and dull by mutual anger.

If the Prince were to die at this very moment, she thought, it would not be soon enough. But then, of course, he'd die soon enough anyways. He lived in Newcastle, which was full of crazies after all. And they'd all die soon enough, looming army and all.

But . . .

". . . Do you think you could sneak Flame into his privy?" Bite him in the ass! Buuuurrn!

"What? No! He'd never do that! Wonderful concept, Louise, you're learning, but terrible idea in execution. My Familiar would scorn me for life if I told him to sit in the Prince's chamber pot! And there just so much that could go wrong! He could—"

"That's enough, Kirche. I get it. I was joking." That seemed to settle her somewhat, and the conversation had diffused a bit of tension between them, so she figured it was worth it. Kirche would probably hold it over her somehow later though.

Either way, they reached and returned to the feast in a short enough matter after that, so Louise would cross that bridge when she got there—it wasn't like Kirche lacked for things to laud over her anyways. The hall was relatively unchanged, still with Commoners messily disarrayed in drunken carousing and Nobles looking down their noses and tutting at them whilst getting just as plastered. Tabitha had decided to stand outside the door, probably for the silence, but was, amazingly, without a book at hand. Kirche noticed the oddity as well.

"Oi! Tabby! Why the long face?" Tabitha's face was no longer than it had ever been, Kirche's remarks were completely ridiculous and roundabout. And Tabitha didn't do ridiculous, so she remained quiet, waiting for a proper question. Kirche didn't notice; she kept blabbering incessantly, as always; her words melted together into a dull, aching buzz in the back of Louise's head. And probably Tabitha's too. Louise assumed that anybody with an hour's dealings with Kirche von Zerbst learned to tune her chatter out.

"Something happen?" In finishing their approach, she noticed that Tabitha hadn't actually put her book away, only bookmarked her place for later with a finger. Tabitha never kept a bookmark—she never needed one. But if you wanted to borrow one of her books, you had best have one, or so Louise'd learned. Dog-ear one of her books and you would suffer the consequences.

"Loud." Tabitha just loved to be succinct, but that didn't mean she was boring.

"Wasn't it already loud?" Louise pretended to be thoughtful, 'hmmming' with a finger to her cheek.

Tabitha blushed slightly. "Loud_er._" She stressed the _er_, but only a friend would have noticed the distinction, or the embarrassed smile she made afterwards. It was a game between them, that Louise would always pay attention to what her friend said, and would point out when her brevity went too far. The idea had come to her when she was struggling to find a way to connect with the girl who had, before, been nothing but a lump that Kirche dragged everywhence; it was patterned after the tendency her Familiars had of playing lawyer with her questions and slipping around her bait with non-answers that looked like answers.

"Ahhh!" She snapped, as if she finally understood something that had, before, been completely beyond her. "Gotcha! So, what happened?"

"Loud_er._" Turnabout's fair play.

"Sorry." She coughed the apology. Just because it was a fair move didn't mean it wasn't embarrassing. "Do you know _why_ it got louder?"

Another imperceptible smile. They were really more felt than seen, even to her, and they were almost always obfuscated by books, so this was somewhat rare. Still, they happened, at least when Louise was around. She couldn't be sure of things she didn't see, after all, but she assumed that there were other times her friend emoted.

Tabitha looked pensive for a silent moment, as if she was struggling to find a way to answer her in as few words as possible. In the lull, Louise became aware of the fact that Kirche hadn't yet realized she was being wholly ignored.

"King announced wedding." That was quite the mouthful for her friend, and it didn't go unnoticed. She really hadn't been expecting that, and neither had Kirche, who'd just asked a 'yes or no' question.

"Whaat?! Don't tell meee." Kirche looked to Louise, who nodded.

"I hate it when y'all don't listen." She crossed her arms, the irony lost to her.

Louise thought it was funny, though, so she laughed. Kirche ignored her, and pointedly so, huffing as she asked, "So, whose wedding?"

Tabitha shrugged, not even bothering to hum a reply, as if compensating for having just used so many words. Only with Tabitha were three words considered 'so many.'

"A secret wedding, huh . . ." Louise trailed off quickly. She'd really only been thinking aloud. The wedding wasn't a secret, of course, but the participants were. She'd have wonder who lucky couple was, if it wasn't for the fact that it was just terrible timing. It was such an obvious move to bolster the esprit de corps, she couldn't imagine who'd want to be married right before dying.

"It's frivolous and a poorly timed contrivance meant to divert the minds of the masses away from their impending dooms."

Louise's outburst drew the attentions of her friends, and they both looked a bit shocked, really. But she gave it a moment, just a moment, and what she'd said started to sink in. All three of them frowned in their own little ways, almost as if they were in sync. No one spoke against her, though. They were in silent agreement, it seemed.

The spell was broken by Tabitha's, "You?"

It took Louise a second to figure out what she was asking, but Kirche figured it out first. She started complaining, and was shortly being ignored once more, but Louise had caught enough of what Kirche'd been on about to know what Tabitha had been asking. Kirche had been friends with Tabitha longer than she had, so of course she was a bit better with the word games she played, if not the subtle parts.

"We found the Prince in his chambers, and he seems to be as mad as they come."

A small nod. "Letter?"

"No such luck. He's too loony to hand it over." Maybe her Familiar had had something to do with that, but Louise had a feeling that that wasn't really it.

A raised brow.

"Now don't give me that look! There's nothing for it; he's still Royalty, Tabby."

"What, then?"

Kirche's was whining about how maybe sticking her Familiar in his chamber pot wasn't such a bad idea after all, or maybe Louise could sick one of her Familiars on him. Those were terrible ideas—Louise had no real control over her Familiars—Kirche was sadly mistaken.

"I'm not sure. Perhaps we can wait for the wedding and mug him for it then, when everybody's distracted?" She smiled, pumping her fist as if to knock the Prince a good one.

Her friends didn't look so happy with the idea. In fact, they looked downright disturbed by the suggestion, almost as if she were the mad one.

"What?" She looked dumbly back and forth between the two.

"Louise, when did you become so violent?" There was no doubt about there being concern in Kirche's voice this time.

"I'm not violent!" Certainly not more than she'd ever been. Her temper had always been short, but that wasn't new.

"Yes, well maybe violent isn't the right word for it," Kirche searched quietly.

Tabitha supplied her with, "Common."

"Yes, that's it. Mugging is a very Commoner way of going about things, Louise."

"It is not!" It was not! She was a Vallière, and she had not picked _that_ much up during such a short stay in the slums, that just wasn't possible. "Shut up, Zerbst!" She was being nothing but a bully, teasing her, that was it; and Tabitha was in on it because she was the one getting married! Or, no—that didn't work. Louise was relatively sure that Tabitha wasn't even interested in men, or humans, for that matter. Or anything else, really. Maybe books. But what, then? She was not Common!

"Ahem, Ladies."

"Oh, hello, Wardes." No she was not Common! No No NO!

"Well she's busy, isn't she," Wardes commented to her friends, whom she heard mumble some sort of reply. Wardes . . . Wardes . . . War—

"Viscount!"

"Aha, finally I'm noticed, then? Yes, it is me, the only one! And you are, of course, the Lovely Miss Vallière." She figured he'd sneaked up on her, though he'd learned his lesson and avoided the reach of her knee.

"Y-yes! Of course, I knew it was you from the very beginning."

"I'm sure; charmed, really. Now, if you don't mind, ladies, I'd like to ask if I could pull Louise aside. It'll take just a moment, really. Or maybe not—it all depends."

A confused minute was spent, where the girls shared wary glances and wondered what the Viscount might possibly want, but no one really had any clue, so nothing was said and it was a wasted minute. At the end of it, Louise's friends nodded, so she took it as reluctant acquiescence. She felt much the same.

"I'll be back as soon as possible, go enjoy the party, don't worry about me," she whispered to them before nodding to Wardes and joining him in his walk. They quietly left Tabitha and Kirche behind. There was nothing to be said, it had all happened too quickly.

Louise and Wardes turned a corner, and her friends were no longer in sight.

"So, Wardes, where are we going?" She didn't like it when people tried to be mysterious, she got enough of that from her Familiars.

He smiled, and it felt more real than his usual smile for some reason. She found it unnerving. "You'll see when we get there, Louise. It's to be a surprise."

They took another turn. Newcastle was a deceptive name; the halls were far older than any she'd seen before. But maybe that was lack of upkeep. She doubted they were so silly as to waste their money on superfluous cleaning maids when they were so entrenched in losing a civil war. Still, there was more than a little dust, and the halls were chilly, with too few candles with too many gaps between their lights, which was inappropriate for a seat of Royalty. She didn't think that what was appropriate for Royalty held much meaning to King James, though, so she decided that it made sense.

They took another turn, this time passing the way to the docks. She saw the flood of last minute passengers, and wondered what it must be like to not have a dragon and a griffon in your company, what it would be like to have to rely on strangers for transport. And then she remembered that that was how they'd gotten to Albion, and berated herself for forgetting. She almost recognized a dirty flash of hair in the crowd, but she dismissed it as getting her hopes up, and they were past the wharves just as soon as she might have thought otherwise.

They took another turn, and they climbed a flight of stairs, up above the feast. She saw her Familiars gorging themselves and the King leave the festivities for the night.

And then they took another turn.

"Wardes, this is taking too long. This had better be worth something, or I won't be forgiving you."

He just flashed another of those too-real smiles and shook his head. "We're just about there, my, Louise. Just a little farther." She couldn't tell if that 'my' was him being dramatic or possessive, but she thought it was foppish either way. She prepared a rebuttal.

And then they took another turn, and the rebuttal fell from her lips.

Wardes kept walking the short distance to the balustrade and put a hand on it before turning to her. The dull moonlight shined softly in his silvering hair, and he looked more than a tad dashing.

"This balcony might not be here tomorrow, Louise."

She kept mum, only nodding, transfixed.

"But I think it won't be so easily forgotten, like every other balcony. This balcony . . ." He glanced up. ". . . this moon . . ." It was so foreign, to hear the singular form of moons. ". . . and these people, they—why . . ." He looked up again, and his gaze remained heavenward as he continued. "Why don't we make them memorable? Why don't we make this the famous balcony scene, to go down in the annals and copied by the playwrights?"

She didn't know what to say.

He tuned back to her once more, passion in his eyes. "Louise, I've spoken to the King already for permission. Please, would you marry me in this dire hour?"

She _really_ didn't know what to say.

"Ha, I can understand if you're a bit speechless, but please, an answer before the castle burns?" He seemed urgent. She didn't know why she was paying so much attention to the Viscount's mannerisms at a moment such as this when it would have been better spent trying to puzzle out what she was to say, but she was.

A wedding? Married? Did she want that? She didn't, did she? But to say no to him when he was like this . . . But . . .

. . . the wedding. The morale booster.

"Louise?" He sounded impatient.

Of course, they wouldn't be dying; they had ways to escape, a dragon and a griffon and two powerful Wind Mages, so it wouldn't be that they would die right after marrying. No, they would boost the people's morale and then flee. But that wasn't any reason to get married. Even if it was some sort of sacrifice for the dying men, it would be pointless. They were still going to die, whether she married the Viscount or not, and she would not be used, despite his tempting presentation. She'd been offered more difficult choices before.

She interrupted him just as he was about to ask again.

"No."

"Yes, well, that's not what I'd hoped to hear." Things went better than expected, he took it surprisingly well.

"I'm sorry, Wardes, but now is not the time. It's a terrible time, in fact. I don't think I want to be wed anytime soon, and maybe not ever, though that's not certain. But certainly not now, or even anytime in the near future, for the matter." She tried to be as kind as possible, though maybe that was a lie and she only tried a little. He could forgive her for that, though.

"I—I need some time to myself, to think, maybe . . ." He took it shakily, and yet almost calmly, as he brushed by her on his way back into the halls. "To think, yes," she heard his mutters fade into silence as the distance between them grew. When she couldn't tell his mutters apart from the hum of the castle, she went and took up where he'd been resting on the balustrade.

To think of it, she didn't even like balconies. She'd gotten attacked on one. She much preferred couches.

The penumbra wasn't very high in the sky anymore; it was after midnight, but she didn't know how long it had been like that, how long she'd been there. She actually became aware of the state of the heavens when L.L. approached from behind and joined her. With his approach, the hum of the castle became slightly more comfortable, giving way to a more familiar hum.

"What are your thoughts, then?" She didn't bother check who it was.

"And what could you be on about, I wonder?" He didn't bother to check that she knew who she was talking to.

She twirled her fingers on the stone balustrade. Little flecks chipped off at her touch, and she threw them to the wind.

"I know, you must know precisely what I'm on about . . . you always know everything else."

"Maybe," he chuckled. She wasn't going to bother puzzling out what that meant.

"So, do you . . . think I did the right thing?" She reached up, looking as if she might cup the penumbra and kiss it. The process scattered more flecks of stone that had been stuck to her hand.

"That's up to you."

She thought maybe she had him, and said smartly, "What you think is not up to me."

"Oh, you're learning?" Apparently not.

She heard his steps as he left her alone once more, nothing but a moon she didn't like all that much for company.

The wind was cold, and Louise was confused, but the sun would come in a few hours, and she felt maybe she was right for once, if she could only figure out that damned troublesome Royal Prince. But she felt a vague optimism in the frigid Albion cold.

* * *

King James Tudor, who didn't really care if he was the first or the nine thousand and first of his name, sighed as he relaxed into his throne. He'd escaped the cacophony of night's festivities to seek silence in solitude. He could feel the chill air in his aching joints.

"That's what you call feeling your age, I guess." No one heard him, he was alone anyways. There were guards posted outside his door, but he'd mumbled far too quietly to catch their interest.

There weren't any windows in Newcastle's throne room, and the door was closed but for a crack. He could see light trickling in through that crack, but there weren't any candles in the room, so it was nearly pitch black despite the crack's best efforts. He blinked but noticed almost no difference, so he just kept his eyes shut. He would have liked some candles, but the magic candles required upkeep, and they'd been conserving their willpower for the battle with Cromwell's men. In their place, they'd taken to using regular wax candles that needed replacing. But even then, the throne room wasn't used anymore, so there were no candles, and no matter how much he thought about it, there still wouldn't be any candles when he opened his eyes.

It was a lot like what he thought being dead would be like—cold and dark and quiet and empty, with a faintly felt light that didn't help you see anything.

His brooding was interrupted by a shadow passing over his little door crack, catching his interest. The crack expanded as the door was briefly opened in full, revealing the outline of a young man. Said young man shut the door back as it had been and approached him silently but for the clicking of his boots on the stone floor.

"I knew I'd find you here, father." It was his son. He wasn't surprised.

"I had a feeling you would." It had been far too long since he'd spoken with Wales, but he'd had no such feeling; only a wish.

"That's interesting." He didn't sound interested.

The Tudors stood and sat in an awkwardly companionable gap of silence. Wales repeatedly shifted his weight, moving slightly. It wasn't enough to be seen, but James could hear the shuffling of his clothes. James, King though he was, felt himself fall asleep and waken several times. He assumed he snored, but his son didn't mention it.

"I'm back."

The King didn't know what to say to that, so he kept quiet and enjoyed to pleasant truthful ring of it.

"And I'm sane once more." But then there was that. He hadn't thought of it, but he supposed that it would eventually have to be brought up.

"I guess . . . apologies are in order," he said, trying to sound gruff, but it still came out tentatively.

"No. I think I understand. Not completely, but somewhat." They both tried to laugh, but stopped as soon as they caught the other laughing.

There was another silence, though James managed to remain awake this time . . . maybe. He thought so, anyways. But Wales moved about just as anxiously. Reuniting was supposed to be loud and emotive and easy, but he was quickly learning that it was not so.

"Will you be attending the wedding tomorrow? You really should be there, son." Calling him son was not as natural as he'd hoped it would be. He wondered if it was just as difficult for Wales to greet him as father.

"Wedding? At a time like this?"

"Yes, a marriage! Perhaps not an ideal time . . ." It was definitely poor timing, but he knew better than turn down a blessing, even mixed as it was. "But the men needed something such as this."

"I suppose so . . . Who is to be married, then?"

"Two lowlanders. Princess Henrietta's Knight has asked her Royal Messenger's hand."

Wales jumped at that, but it meant nothing to him. It wasn't his business anyways.

His son answered, "I'll think on it." That was enough.

"But I'll be going now. I'm more than exhausted, and I don't have the luxury of napping. But I'll be sure to think about this before retiring." The night was more than half gone, so he couldn't blame him, but the barb about napping hurt. His son would learn when he was older . . . or not . . .

"Please tell the guards that they can have the night off on your way out." Who would begrudge a loyal man his last supper?

"I will," was all the reply he got, and then his son was walking away again.

Reunions were supposed to be dramatic, but apparently that was a lie.

His son closed the door on his way out, completely this time, and the spaceless void that he guessed death was like, but probably didn't reflect death's nature at all, returned.

The door opened again not ten minutes later, revealing a taller shadow than last time. This one didn't close the door, in fact he left it hanging open, and for the first time that night, there was barely enough light to make out who he would be talking to before he reached him.

"Oh, Viscount! It's good to see you again!" The Viscount was a wonderful young man, splendid, with a sense of modern Tristainian Court fashion.

"Yes, very good." And he was polite to boot! If he'd a daughter, he wouldn't have minded if she'd decided to marry the foreign Viscount.

Then came the perfunctories. "So I take it that you still want me to perform the ceremony?"

"No, I'm afraid—she said that the timing was sickening." Though that hadn't been the perfunctory reply that he'd been expecting. He couldn't imagine the little girl he'd met to say such a thing, but perhaps he'd never seen her temper.

"Ah—oh . . . That—that's too bad . . ." Still, in cases such as this, all men knew that there was an unspoken code of brotherhood to be followed. He would take care with his words.

"Very much so, for all of us."

"Yes . . . This will come as a big blow to our men's morale. Everybody was looking forward to it."

"There will be quite the lack in morale, Your Majesty."

"Oh, what do you me—"

King James was cut short by the sword-wand thrust into his chest. He tried to speak, to call out, but it came out as nothing but a burble.

"She couldn't love me; I couldn't have even that small part of my desire. I'll be damned if I'm the only one to suffer."

The Viscount yanked the weapon out of his chest, pulling him onto the floor in the process, and he felt the blood begin to fill his lungs and stream out of the fresh wound. Wardes reached into his pocked and took his wand, tucking it in his own. He flourished his sword-wand and a burst of magic sluiced the blood off, leaving it as sparkling and polished as it had been.

Without another word, the Viscount turned to go, his shadow lengthening as he neared the light of the door. He shut it as it had been behind him without a wayward glance.

King James knew that he would be dying a bit earlier than scheduled. He wished that he'd followed the Tristainian Court fashions, so that he too would have a feather tucked in his hat, but he hadn't, so he made do with dipping his finger in the quickly congealing puddle. He tried to scribble out what he could with his limited supply of blood ink, hoping that years of practicing penmanship helped to combat that he couldn't see what he was writing.

He got out what he supposed was the gist of his story before dying. It came suddenly, and he didn't have enough time to tell if death felt like what he thought it did.

* * *

"My father said that you have the night off."

The guards nodded, smiles crossing their wrinkled faces. They were old family friends, so Wales knew them well. They were also identical twins, so he'd never been able to tell them apart, but he didn't think they minded.

"Have a goodnight, Highness," Alvin told him. Or maybe it was Floyd. It didn't matter.

"I'll be sure to do that. You too." It didn't matter because he made sure to never address just one of them. And then he made sure to never look towards them as they walked as a unit. They split apart at the next intersection, and Wales wondered which way he wanted to go. There was the kitchens and the feast to the right, if he wanted to follow after Alvin and Floyd. Straight ahead was the quickest way to the docks or the Royal chamber, but also a way out into the town that he'd made with Henrietta years ago. And then there was the left, which lead to a flight of stairs that would lead to the floor with the guest rooms and then, above that, the battlements and the roof. He liked the sound of the roof, the fresh air would help him think.

He took to the stairs. They spiraled up, spinning to make attacks difficult. He meandered, taking his time, but it wasn't a long way to the top. Still, as he neared the top, he was confronted by a tall shadow that he didn't recognize. That wasn't odd though, he hadn't been very social in his last couple months.

"Oh, and who are you? I'm afraid that I don't recognize you." The man had a good fashion sense, though. A wide brimmed hat, trimmed beard, the whole deal. He looked rather spiffy. Wales wondered what a beard would feel like, but realized immediately that he would never know.

"Well met, sir. You must be the Prince. I hadn't expected to see you out and about, by tale." And he was polite, that was a plus.

"I'm aware of the tale, but rest assured that I am no shut in." But Wales had always hated the perfunctories. And had been a shut in, but he had to at least deny the fact publicly.

"I can see." The other man, stranger though he may have been, had a good grasp of perfunctories, however. All of his replies were very predictable.

Wales laughed at the joke. "Haha, yes. But pray tell, who might you be?"

"Would you like three guesses?" That almost sounded fun to Wales, but he needed to get his thinking and deciding over with quickly and rush off to bed, so as to be rested for battle.

"I'm in a bit of a hurry, I'm afraid. Do you mind simply telling me?"

"Ah, pooh. I am Viscount Jean-Jacques de Wardes, Your Highness." The self-proclaimed Viscount bowed deeply and smoothly and tipped his hat, waving about the feather in it as he stood back up.

"Oh! I have just heard tale of you! Congratulations on the engagement, sir." Wales could be polite too, if he tried. And that Louise that this man was to be marrying hadn't seemed like a very pleasant woman, so he supposed that Sir Wardes deserved as much kindness as he could give. Brimir knew that that girl wouldn't give him any.

"Thank you kindly, Highness."

"Please, no formalities. It's Wales, or at least Tudor; I insist." He really disliked pomp and ceremony in general, not just perfunctories.

"You're very much like your father, Mister Tudor," the Viscount laughed. Wales laughed along with him.

"You might be right, Sir. But really, I should go. It was a pleasure to meet you, goodnight Viscount."

"Have a goodnight, Mister Tudor." The Viscount grinned at him as he started his way down the spiral. The smile didn't look very real at all, and the man had seemed distracted. Maybe he realized how terrible a wife his bride would be.

Having met the bride and groom, Wales decided that he would attend, if solely out of sympathy. Still, he needed some time to himself, so to the roof his intentions remained.

He'd developed a slight taste for the quiet in the time he'd been holed up in his room and lurking about the castle. There'd been plenty to read and plenty of time to do it, without the distractions of human interaction. He'd read histories, and novels, and biblical works of all sorts. And then he'd dug come across a part of the library that everybody else had forgotten how to reach, and he'd learned about the occult. Or maybe it hadn't been the occult, considering he hadn't brought his Familiar back to life. But that could have well been his malfunctioning magic? Either way, he'd lost the ambition to try again, even though he'd set out time for it—he didn't want to risk summoning _another_ person. That wasn't even how magic was supposed to work. Or was that right? Had it been proven? Perhaps he could puzzle it out. Solace in solitude could be sought in such a times of tension as the pre-battle nerves, but he just needed a quiet place to think. The same place would serve, though. To the roof! Where there would be men preparing to fight off dragons . . . To the balcony!

He snapped out of his thoughts only to realize that he'd been standing at the top of the stairs for an hour. Living alone and unaffected by others had also diminished his understanding of time somewhat. Maybe that's why they thought he was mad.

He also snapped out of them to realize that he wasn't alone, that there was that strange woman from earlier standing next to him, leaning on the banisters, staring indolently.

"How long have you been there?"

She smiled. "Always."

Of course that made no sense to him, and it wouldn't have made any more sense to anyone else in his situation. The woman was weird; strange; there was something about her that spoke of un-, sub-, or supernatural forces. Or maybe he read too much into things. Or he just read too much.

"Well, I really must be going." He didn't savour the thought of having to speak to her again. And he just so happened to know a certain balcony with a perfect view of the penumbrae.

He took the final step and started on his way. He was tired and needed to get his thinking out of the way before bed.

She stepped next to him, as if to walk along, and said, "I'm Louise's Familiar, you know."

Whatever thoughts she might have borne of walking along side him stopped when he heard that. Of course that was the sort of thing to make a man stop in his tracks, she must have known that.

"Come again?" He turned to her and blinked.

By the time he was done blinking, he was lost. His surroundings were very much organic—magical—mechanical—celestial. They changed. He couldn't actually discern what they were actually like, only that they were off. Un-, sub-, or supernatural. The word surreal came to mind, but he'd never heard it before, so it had no lexicographical meaning to him.

Here a bird, there a bird, everywhere a bird bird. Do the hocus pocus, and you spin your world about, that's what it's all about, sans several corollaries of things that held the same probability of being what it truly was all about, and the chance that what it was all about might just be wishful thinking, or that there might be several ways to figure out what it was all about, or that the closest thing to what it was all about was a conglomeration of several very important things within a couple standard deviations of a normal probablility curve, or . . . ad nauseam.

He blinked again, this time awake. He'd fallen asleep, and it seemed that his strange walking-partner had caught him. Just as his eyes opened, he felt there might have been a flash more or 'here a bird, there a bird,' but when he looked again, there wasn't,

"Pleasant dreams?" There was something odd about the lack of devilishness in her smirk.

"I'm sorry, I seem to have fallen asleep during our conversation." Maybe. It was a bit fuzzy. "Let me assure you that it wasn't your fault, and that you're in no way an unpleasant person to talk to." He didn't actually know that, but he was just standing up from having fallen asleep in a hallway in the arms of a strange woman, and it was the polite thing to say, no matter how he loathed posturing.

"You enjoy stating the obvious," she said it as if she was stating the obvious as well. It felt all so very roundabout and contradictory.

He laughed it off. That was one of the first things they taught you, to laugh off strange comments.

She kept smirking coldly as he tried to distance himself from her discreetly. He expected her to say some sort of cutting remark, but she just looked away, past him. He followed her gaze to find himself face-to-face with another stranger of the same caliber. So many strangers had infested his home in his time off.

"If you'll so kindly relinquish your hold on my accomplice, we'd like to be off for the night," he was a cordial, somewhat tall brunet that had an air of command about him, but his eyes glanced unkindly at where Wales had been unknowingly holding the woman's hand. It appeared that he'd stolen someone's date.

Wales quickly, and somewhat embarrassedly, unclasped his hand and finished distancing himself. The eerie pale skinned brunet took up his strange, green haired date, and they began gliding down the hall with measured steps, going back the way he'd come with her. Why had she walked that way, if only to turn right back?

"Have a goodnight, Wally," the strange couple called. He'd never told them his name, but them knowing it wasn't surprising. He wished that he knew their's, though, and nicknaming Royalty was rude, not that he minded. But they seemed to know that he wouldn't mind, or else they were insane. They disappeared, descending down the stairs, before he had the thought to ask them.

Wales shook his head, chagrined. He really had no idea what to make of that. Or them.

A turn and-a-half later, and Wales was halfway through turning when he saw that his destination wasn't as vacant as he'd expected. Beyond his expectations, the bride-to-be was out on the balcony, leaning on the balustrade and staring out at nothing. That had been his plan. Great minds think alike, he figured. And she was a guest to his household, so perhaps he shouldn't have been so dismissive of her. Maybe an apology was in order.

He stepped forward, not entirely sure what to say. He hoped to quietly join her, and maybe he could ignore her and get his thinking done.

She noticed him, however. He hadn't exactly been sneaking. She spun about, looking surprised.

"Prince Tudor," she said evenly.

How to apologize? He had to get his answer quickly, or he'd get distracted. Perhaps a straightforward apology and congratulations on the wedding? Or maybe he could be more subtle; wasn't he a Prince of the Court? His station was still higher than hers . . . but then, he'd grievously offended her person and her mission. So maybe a more emphatic apology slipped in between a more urbane conversation? That would work.

Except she'd been talking the whole time he'd been thinking.

". . . you'd forgive this little lunacy," she was saying. He didn't follow.

"Wha—"

He saw a flash of something that looked un-, sub-, or superna . . .

Here a _BIRD_, there a _BIRD_, everywhere a _BIRD BIRD_.

* * *

. . . ad nauseam, ad nauseam, ad nauseam . . .

One _BIRD_ Two _BIRD_ Red _BIRD_ Blue _BIRD_. Hawk, Eagle, Parakeet. Parakeet? Are you sure this time? No, I meant Magpie. Are you sure this time? No, I meant another Eagle. Are you sure . . .

. . . ad nauseam, ad nauseam, ad nauseam . . .

One BIRD, but then shouldn't 'Two _BIRD_' be 'two _BIRDS_'? That's how you pluralize a word, isn't it?

Red _BIRD_, but then shouldn't 'Blue _BIRD_' be the same 'Red _BIRD_'? Since when is there anything but a Red _BIRD_?

The Red _BIRD_ is all there is.

. . . all there is . . .

. . . all there is . . . is a Red _BIRD_

. . . all there is . . .

. . . all there is . . . is a Red _BIRD_

. . . all there is . . .

. . . all there is . . . is a Red _BIRD_, a Red _BIRD_ is all there is a Red _BIRD_

. . . ad nauseam? ad nauseam? ad nauseam . . . ?

No, there's much too much ad nauseam being thrown about, tut, tut. That won't do.

But where will the Red _BIRD_ go?

I thought there were Two _BIRDS_, what happened to the second One?

You're hallucinating, there were never Two _BIRDS_; there was only One _BIRD_ Two _BIRD_, and Two _BIRD_ hasn't shown itself yet.

Are you sure this time? No, I meant a Crane. Are you sure this time? Yes. Then it was _One Red Crane_?

. . . Yes, _One Red Crane_ to rule them all, no?

. . . No, _One Red Crane_ to tip the scales, yes?

. . . ad nauseam? ad naus—Stop with that dreadful ad nauseaming! It's giving me a headache!

. . . Yes?

I'm not joking! Desist immediately; be quiet!

. . . I'm sorry, please forgive my ad nauseaming. I'm trying to quit, but it's so difficult.

Yes, well, I appreciate the effort. Perhaps I could help you, is you could tell me why.

It's because there's _One Red Crane_ to tip the scales! I can't help it!

Well, since you tried, I forgive you. There, how's that?

. . . I still feel _guilty_. Don't you feel _guilty_?

What?! Of course not! Don't be rid . . . ic . . . u . . .

Hello? Are you alright?!

I—I feel it.

Feel what?

_One Red Crane_.

I was right, then? Well, don't you feel guilty?

. . . Yes, _I do_.

. . . ad nauseam? ad nauseam? ad nauseam . . . ?

. . . Yes . . . ad nauseam, ad nauseam, ad nauseam . . .

* * *

Wales woke up with a headache and panicked immediately because he was in his personal chambers and he didn't know he'd gotten there. He rubbed his eyes as he sat up in bed, pushing out of the comforter.

He'd gone to speak to Loui—

"Gurkh!"

A splitting, shameful pain lanced through his head as he tried to remember. If he was feeling shameful, then, he guessed, he'd fallen asleep on Louise as he'd done with that strange woman that that claimed to be the girl's Familiar.

. . . Familiar? He mustn't have been in his right mind not to question that sort of claim! He'd have to corner her and get some answers on one of his free days . . . except there wouldn't be any more free days. Wasn't he going to die in battle soon?

. . . Battle? . . . Battle?

Battle! There was a battle! He shot up out of bed and ran to the door. The knob gave him a fight, so he kicked it. That didn't work, all he got for his efforts was a stubbed toe. He ended up shaking the knob until it opened, and then he bolted out.

Window, a window. He needed a window to see what time it was. He ran through the halls, cursing the fact that the Royal quarters lacked windows. He turned a corner, and finally found one.

The sun was up, and looking out on the grounds, there was chaos. Wales couldn't tell if it was pre-battle chaos or battle chaos, but either way, he needed to get there quickly. He reached for his wand, to jump down and use his Wind magic to slow his descent to his men, but then he remembered that his magic was broken—it would be almost completely useless in battle.

He needed a weapon . . . a-a-a . . . a sword! Then . . . to the Armory!

He headed off, running blindly. Wales knew the way to the Armory with his eyes closed. Memorizing the floor plan one of the things you learned from living in a castle.

Run, run, run. Turn. Run, run, run. Turn. Climb stairs. Run, run, run. Tu—_ad nauseam_—no, keep going straight. He stopped to backtrack, thinking, 'but that's the way to the Armory.'

His headache acted up, and he felt a drop of sweat form as he felt like an evil bastard that should just dry heave to death.

'But don't you feel _guilty ad nauseam_?'

Wales felt like retching, but he pushed down. Whatever, maybe it was his intuition. Anyways, he could take the next turn ahead and still get to the Armory.

Run, run, run. Tu—_ad nauseam_—no, keep going straight. But, that wasn't the—_One Red Crane ad nauseam_. He retched again, and Wales had to fight to keep his dinner down.

"This is _not_ how intuition is supposed to work," he muttered in frustration. He paused, and it came to him that there was a smaller, but still viable, stockpile of weapons on the roof, and that he could get the guards up there to catch him up.

With this in mind, he started to run, run—stop.

"What?" he whispered to himself incredulously. He'd just stopped in the middle of the hall! That was completely stupid! He tried to take a step forward, and he fell over and started mewling and crying.

What in God's name was happening to him?!

He tried to wiggle forward and felt himself collapse further into inexplicable despair. He sat there for a minute, weeping silently, before the thought came to him to try wiggling backwards. He inched back, and immediately he felt relief. He crawled back even further, and the guilty feelings went away completely and he was able to stand upright.

Now completely at a loss for words, Wales took stock of his situation and tried to come up with a rational—or at least a magical—explanation. He failed to find one. In fact, his mind didn't even wander off on any tangents. He'd never read of anything remotely like this; there were no related ideas to get distracted by. There was no hypnosis or magic that he'd ever heard of that turned a man into a puddle of tears when he passed a chalked up door in a random hallway.

A . . . chalked up door? That was strange. The maids would kill . . . never mind.

Wales realized that he could hear muffled arguments and screaming through the door.

" . . . Turn it off! Turn it off! Make it stop! I can't bee seen like this!"

"You know we—"

"I don't care what I know! _Turn it off! Make it go away again!_"

"We don't have that power, Louise."

Yes, now that he thought of it, he could recognize Louise. He was interested in what they were saying, though he felt a tad guilty that he'd fallen asleep during his conversation with her. That was so inexcusably rude, and he'd done it twice in one day.

Abstracted by curiosity, but far too embarrassed to walk into a room during the middle of a heated argument, Wales realized that the room Louise was in was on the outside of the castle, and he recalled that the guest suites, one of which this was, all had windows. Which, he reasoned, meant that there was a chance that he could see what Louise wanted turned off so desperately if he could look in the window. The easiest and most covert way to do that would be to continue forward and then try to look from the window of another guest room, but he couldn't go for forward, so then the next best option would be . . . the balcony he'd tried to speak to her on the night before. It jutted out more than enough that he'd be able to see into Louise's room.

Taking a tentative step back, to make sure that he could, Wales rushed to the balcony.

"Perfect," he cheered himself on. He could clearly see Miss Vallière gesturing wildly at that enigmatic couple he'd run across the night before who were sprawled on the bed. They seemed to be giving her flat answers that only further enraged the petite girl. Momentarily, Wales wondered where her husband was at, and felt a stab of guilt when he realized that he must have missed the wedding.

The strange woman then noticed him watching, and despite him gesturing that she please remain shushed and keep it a secret between them, she pointed his presence out to Louise. Huh, maybe there was some sort of Familiar-level loyalty there.

But Louise wasn't thinking about that, apparently. She looked confused and looked in his direction for the first time.

She immediately covered her mouth and looked as if she was screaming in terror, but Wales couldn't hear her. She almost as quickly tried to cover her eyes and turn away, but he'd seen it. That eye. That _BIRD_.

And it all came back to him. And instantly, he hated her with his entire being.

_One Red Crane_ to tip the scales and rape his emotions and defile him with Sin.

It made him _guilty ad nasueam_ because of what she asked.

But he hated her and he wanted her dead that instant, and what she'd asked had been very specific. Too specific; and a hateful mind was quick and apt at exploiting that fact.

He felt _guilty_ about some things, but there would be none if he ripped her to shreds with a well placed gust of Wind.

So that's just what he tried.

And then he remembered, when it was too late and the spell had already been cast, that his magic had been acting up. Then again, considering the ensuing explosion as his spell failed, and the wonderful look of horror that crossed Miss Vallière's face, it worked out just as well.

His work done, and now knowing that there was no choice but to escape, Wales headed off to the docks. It was amazing how easy it was to just follow what the _BIRD_ told him. It was sickening either way, though. Either he fought the _Red Crane_, an in that act became crushed by unnatural _guilt_, or he accepted it silently and became a puppet.

No one followed him, and he didn't encounter a single soul until he reached the docks.

The ships were gone, but there was still a single dockhand posted there. Posted was an excellent way to put it—he was run through with a sizable wooden pole. It was too thick to be the haft of a spear. A closer inspection revealed that it was a piece of the docks themselves, ripped off and impaling the man to the wharves.

Out of morbid curiosity and a rising feeling of panic caused by the _BIRD_, Wales reached out and tried to wiggle the splinter out of the man.

"Please don't, son."

Wales jumped, frightened. He hadn't expected the man to speak, even as weakly as he had. He'd expected that the man was dead.

"M-my apologies." The man appeared to be semi-lucid.

"Th-the Viscount escaped, Highness!" he rasped. And then he giggled.

"The Viscount?" Wardes? That was why Louise had been alone, then. But escaped from what? Last minute wedding day jitters? That had nothing to do with anything relevant to the situation. The man needed healing, if only Wales could work his magic right. But he didn't want to risk it.

"Why are you like this, man? Could the Mages not heal your wound?" It was obvious that he was dying without any sort of aid.

"Na, not that. I was more trouble than it would have been worth. They said they needed their 'willpower' more than they needed another dockhand. Silly old me, I'm just a man, been workin' here all my life. But they gave me some booze, for the pain they said! But it was some good shit, if you'll pardon my sayin' so, Highness. I've never gotten drunk so quick in all my life!" Wales realized that the dockhand didn't seem to actually know who he was talking to. He was just drunkenly answering the voice he heard.

"What of the Viscount, then? How did the wedding go?" Maybe he could at least get some answers out of the man before he died.

"There wasn't no wedding! She said 'no', and the Viscount flipped his shit and wen and killed the King! Before fleeing, of course." The drunken dockhand made the concession as if the part where Wardes fled was anything near as important as his _father's death_.

Wales shouted, "The King is dead?!"

"Long live the King!" the drunk man cheered.

The dockhand cleared his throat, though with the being impaled to the docks and all, it came out as more of a wet sound. "Now, you didn't hear this from me, but I heard it from a friend who heard from lots of other friends—it was one of those friend-hearing chains, you see?—that the Viscount actually killed me for a _reason_, that he want his flyin' bird. But none of us had the key to the stall it was in, so he just blew all the others out—and you know how that works, they just fell out and 'pweeeeeew', kept fallin'—but he did that, and he missed, cuz' I'm a good dodger—I've been in my share of fights—so I just ended up stuck—hah!—stuck here. But at least I was killed for a reason, Highness! But don't tell no one I told you, cuz' I heard it from a friend that don't want to be traced, an' the like." He giggled conspiratorially.

"That's . . . fascinating. But what of your friends? What friend leaves his dying friend alone?"

"They're all prepping for battle now, but I can see that you're not. Would you go after the Viscount for me? Avenge me, cap'n?" Kill the man that had killed his father? What Kind of question was that?

"Yes, please!"

"Thank you kindly, Joey. It puts an old heart like mine at ease to hear you'd pay me back for lending you rent money that time. Now, where was it?" His face twisted in concentration as he dug around his pockets. "Here." He handed Wales a rusty key and pointed to a cabin nestled in the rocks. "Old man Paris had this in 'is pockets. That there's his office, and this'll get you in. There should be a lifeboat in there.

There was a lifeboat in the wharfmaster's locked office.

"Now, it won't have enough energy in it to last you all the way down."

Wales dragged the small craft to the edge.

"But if you wait to the last moment . . ."

He jumped in.

". . . and then you turn the magic windstone thing on . . ."

He pushed off and began free falling through Albion's mist clouds.

". . .you should be able to slow down enough not to die on impact."

Wales had no idea how high up Albion actually was, only that it was a very long drop, and that, following the dockhand's instructions, he still nearly died when he splashed down in the northern oceans off the Tristainian coast.

* * *

"Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière would ask very kindly if you'd forgive this little lunacy." There was a pleasant burn in her left eye as she felt her Geass activate and begin taking hold of the man.

He tried to ask something halfway through, but Louise didn't think that there existed something like halfway-Geass, so he very quickly stopped to listen. She wondered if there must be some minimal guilt that her Geass forced onto other people, to make them listen, but she didn't know. And she didn't care, either way. She was leery enough about using it at all, given her Familiar's frightening explanation of it. She could barely bring herself to use it on Wales, and she nearly hated the madman for his treatment of her. And for the fact that he would be dying and leaving his beloved, who just so happened to be one of her most trusted friends, behind as if that was just fine, or even the heroic thing to do. Bah! Men.

Her Geass holding the man, there was nothing to do but begin her scale tipping.

First things first, she still needed to complete her mission. "Would you please forgive me when I knock you over the head and search your body for Henrietta's letter?"

"Of course, Miss Vallière " His reactions were scripted, not telling her anything. She hoped he actually had the letter on him, or she would just have to go through with mugging him in the morning on the chance that he would have it then.

But how would she find him? He wanted to rush off to battle like a boy with toy soldiers, how would she find him if she awoke to the news that he'd died in the massacre already? For glory!? She . . . needed to be able to make sure that she would see him again before fleeing, so that at least she wouldn't bring nothing but bad news to Henrietta.

"And, would you . . ." What would she do to draw his attention? "Aha! And, I won't forgive you if you run off to battle and run right past the guest suite with the . . ." What? Aha! ". . . chalked up door." She could do that before going to bed. Besides, this was really only a backup plan.

She looked him hard in the eyes, making sure that that request was laid very heavily. She felt a twitch of guilt at using it so, but she wanted him to do it, no matter the moral repercussions. She guessed that he might turn into as big a mess as Mathilda had if he tried to fight that one. At least it was more specific and he wouldn't think everything he did was evil and wrong, only not obeying her would. Well, in theory, at least. Montmorency and Guiche hadn't broken down like the thief had, after all. All she had to do was be as specific as possible, and she could even fix people's love lives!

He shivered as the Geass took effect.

. . . Maybe . . . maybe she could even fix Henrietta's. She was so far from fond of Wales the Madman, but if she could bring them back together, wouldn't Henrietta appreciate that? She'd been so depressed . . .

"And, I—I won't forgive you if you don't escape this castle after seeing me." She felt less guilty about that one, but she still made sure to place it heavily. The Prince had shown himself to be of the resilient type, and she wanted him to follow through like what she said was an unquestionable order from the gods. and if she was doing it for love, then it wasn't so terrible to force a man that hadn't explicitly done _that much_ to her to follow what she said.

He shivered as the Geass took effect.

She shivered as a cool wing blew her hair. And then she kicked him in the back of the head. And the she tried again, but it didn't work. Third time was the charm, however, and he fell like a log, bumping his head on the floor. Maybe that would knock some sense into him. Or maybe it wouldn't and she was just a spiteful girl.

Either way, she searched him for nearly an hour, half-tempted to strip the man, but she couldn't find the letter. Damn her luck. She hadn't actually expected him to have it for some reason, though. She assumed he maybe kept it in his messy room. That was where she would keep her love letters, _if she had any!_

And then she was left with the glorious task of dragging him through the guest suites, down the stairs, and to his chambers. She tried to take the secret tunnel to avoid getting caught, but it was full of smoke, so she ended up sneaking through the halls, tugging the mad Prince, who was much heavier than her, behind her, looking around corners and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. There were oddly no guards, but they could have well had their last night alive given to them. She made it, slightly winded and tired, but no worse for the experience.

"This must be what a pregnant woman feels like, lugging about all this weight," she complained to herself as she threw the Prince towards his bed. "Or Kirche, that cow," she snickered.

The sun was halfway up by the time she made it back to the room she'd been given, and upon entering, she immediately crawled into bed.

* * *

Louise woke up, the sun warm on her face. It felt warm, at least, even against the Albion chill. Maybe it was because the floating continent was closer to the sun, she thought sluggishly as she stretched her limbs and sat up. She was feeling well rested and quite comfortable, which was a bit disconcerting to her, as, when she cracked open her eyes, she found that she'd fallen asleep curled up with L.L. and C.C. She carefully padded out of the bed, not even bothering to be agitated. It was a wonderful morning and she wasn't going to let anything ruin her mood.

Knowing that her Familiars could well be asleep for five more hours, or that they could be feigning sleep and she would never be able to tell, she stepped lightly to the window and looked out to see the position of the sun. It was nearly noon.

She didn't know where the baths were in Newcastle, and she didn't want to stay there much longer, so she had few choices as far as hygiene went. Her hand hovered over the bag of clothes they'd had brought to her room from the ship, but she decided against changing into fresh clothes if she was just going to be dirty in them. Still, her hair was always a mess in the mornings, so she grabbed her brush and sat down in front of the room's vanity mirror.

She closed her eyes and began her one hundred strokes with practiced ease. She finished in what felt like very little time, and opened her eyes to inspect her work. She'd done a very diligent job and her hair was nice and shiny, but that was not the problem. The problem was that there was a bird in her left eye. She'd made very sure to turn off her Geass the night before, or at least she thought so, so it was very out of place. She blinked, trying to make it go away, but it didn't work. She tried again, screwing both eyes shut tight, but when she reopened them and her sight readjusted, it was still there, looking menacing.

"Go away," she whispered. She didn't actually know what controlled her Geass turning on and off; she'd just assumed that it responded to her will, but it didn't go away.

"Please go away?" Asking politely didn't work.

"Please?" Begging didn't work.

"Go away." Dismissing didn't work.

"Now." Commanding didn't work.

"Or now." Waiting didn't work.

"_Please!_" Nor desperate yelling.

She shrieked wordlessly, hoping that would work, and maybe out of terror of failing again. That didn't work either. But it roused her Familiars up out of bed. She saw them rise in the mirror, and she turned to them panic stricken.

"Help! It wont stop! What am I doing wrong?!" she shouted without preamble. They'd probably been watching the whole time anyways.

"How should I know?" L.L. shrugged.

"Why—be-because you're . . . you know . . . you! You're my Familiars, you know everything!"

"Thank you for the vote of confidence, little Louise," C.C. said. He tone implied that she was going to continue and say whether or not they knew everything, but she just stopped there and went back to lying down.

"But you have to turn it off! Turn it off! Make it stop! I can't bee seen like this!"

"You know we—"

"I don't care what I know! _Turn it off! Make it go away again!_ I don't want to live like this for the rest of my life!"

"You don't have, Master, it'll go away eventually," C.C. sounded as if she were trying to coddle her.

"And how do you know that? And when?!"

L.L. said, "Eventually." He didn't answer the first part, though. And it might have been better if he hadn't said anything at all, with an answer like that.

"Ahhhhh! Shut up! You're useless! You know what? How about . . . I won't forgive you if you wont tell me! You will suffer!" Her already warm Geass blazed as she put it to good use.

Of course, it did absolutely nothing. Her Familiars blinked at her as if she were an idiot, but didn't say anything

"Did you think I would give you a power that you could use against me?" C.C. asked the obvious question, which, Louise realized, had an obvious answer. Of course they wouldn't.

"No, I was just testing!"

"That's great," they both said. They didn't believe her.

"I'm not lying!"

"That's great."

"I'm not—"

"The Prince is watching you," C.C. pointed out the window.

"Wha?" She turned to look. "Oh, my—gaaaaaah!" She tried to hide, hoping he hadn't seen.

A flash of hell was all she remembered after that.

* * *

Louise woke up screaming in phantom pain, but her mouth was shortly muffled. She flashed open her eyes in a heartbeat, only to see that it was L.L.'s hand that kept her quiet. That minor comfort of familiarity didn't keep her from looking about in terror. She didn't recognize the room she was in.

"Shhh, calm down," L.L. cooed soothingly, bringing her back to reality. "Everything's fine."

Everything . . . was . . . fine, she realized. Nothing hurt. She checked, running her hands over herself in a frenzy, but nothing was missing or broken.

She got up shakily and wobbled over the the mirror she'd spotted. Her eyes were clear again; her Geass was gone and they were back to amber.

C.C. called to her from the bed. "We're in your friends' room—yours was full of broken glass after the explosion. Your friends—the shy one and the shameless one, if you're still confused—left to fetch their Familiars so we could leave."

"What of Wardes?"

It was L.L. who answered next. "We're not sure, but we must go. He's got a griffon, so he should be fine no matter what happens to him."

"And what explosion are you talking about?"

Louise shook her head in confusion, pulling a hand through her hair. Her gaze lost focus on her once again normal eyes and focused instead on her strawberry blonde and vibrant green hair.

Ah, that was right. There'd been an explosion in her room. She'd seen Prince Tudor staring at her from a balcony, and then he'd looked like a demon-an unfamiliar demon-and brandished his wand at her again. Only, this time he'd actually casted . . . and it had failed like hers did.

'But he has better aim,' she half-heard.

But . . . she was alive. Explosions were never controllable, and often very weak, but even then she shouldn't have gone without losing . . . something.

She looked at her hair again. It was supposed to be strawberry blonde, and it was, most of it. But large swathes of it were now green like C.C.'s hair, and there was crusted up blood all in it. She looked at C.C. and compared. It was the same colour, even the blood was present.

But . . . her hair was supposed to be . . . she didn't understand.

"C.C. had to—" L.L. started, but he was interrupted.

"—We had to do an emergency transplant. You are now the proud owner of parts of my scalp, one of my ears, two fifths of an eyebrow, and half of a cheek."

She checked. The skin wasn't really any different—her Familiars were as pale as her—but . . . there it was, the little pieces of green above her left eye. Her ears looked the same, at least. But then there was that large swath of green on the left side of her face.

"You can dye it." That was true.

He'd tried to kill her! And who knows how much pain C.C. had had to go through in order to . . . transplant parts of her . . . face.

**"I WILL KILL HIM."**

Kirche walked in right after that, looking nervous. "C-come quick, be-before it starts and we're s-stuck here, y'all." She stepped out and began speed walking, almost running, leading them to the docks without looking to see if they were following her.

They passed a drunk man that looked like he was sleeping on the job, and met up with Tabitha who was already mounted on Slyphid. Kirche rushed them all onto the dragon and placed Flame into her lap. Everybody grabbed on tight as the dragon jumped out of the docks and into the open sky below. As they began to grow distant from Newcastle, and Albion, Louise heard distant screams as the massacre began.

She realized that her Geass must act up when she cast it whilst feeling regretful about doing so, or maybe that was what she overheard from her Familiars' buzzing, but she knew it to be true. She'd felt guilty for Geassing Wales needlessly, but now she felt absolutely no remorse.

ODD#I(e)/5,iii;25Chs3179

AN:

And thus, the end of an arc! Thoughts? Suggestions? Donations? Compliments? Commiserative love poetry? I'd like to know.

This one was a whopper! Nearly 15k words! But not quite enough to be split into two respectable chapters.

As is said on my profile, I don't really have an update schedule. I'll try to keep updates less than two months apart, though, and less than one, if I can. That said, I do have a little ( though not much ) of a life. Also, I just got the last book of the Wheel of Time today, so . . . there goes some time.

I felt a little week during writing Henrietta's part, but I think I really liked writing Wales, so tell me how I did. Considering what's happened to him in EIT and what's known before hand, I tried to construct a personality for him, considering he's usually dead by now in canon. Consider his mind to be susceptible to the early modern era equivalent of tabbed browsing wiki walks, but in his mind. Also, he's so easy to make allusions and references with. There's not _too_ man, but have fun trying to catch them all.

Also, I put up cover art. It's terrible, but better than Lain staring at you at the top of every chapter, I think. I wish I were a physical artist, but I'm only good with words and music. *sob*


	9. You, Looking at Me, Looking at You

**Everything I Touch, I Read**

_Chapter 9_

_You, Looking at Me, Looking at You_

_The Ball of Frigg held no interest to her. Frigg was a boring historical figure anyways—all she did was war. There was no art to her, and it showed in the cheap decadence of her eponymous Ball. Now, if they'd named a ball after a proper Scholar Knight instead of some trumped up war dog . . . but, then again, no. Nothing scholarly could be constrained to annual celebration. She shook her head to clear the idea from her mind, mentally chastising herself. The whole idea of a properly intellectual holiday was flawed to begin with. There weren't enough intellectuals to participate in one, and those who might be interested would certainly find much more interesting ways to pass the time. There was no use in having one day committed to something that should really dominate the calendar—_

Tabitha, who was somewhere wandering the Academy's halls, book in hand, was jolted out of her reading by what, curiously enough, sounded like the distant echoes of an intense battle far above her. Not one to care much for foreign affairs, she simply went back to reading, doing her best to ignore the tumult.

_Silly Tristainians and their petty duels. They knew nothing of the art in life and too much of the technique. There was no passion in any of them, but for their intolerances and for the things they couldn't understand or adhere very much to. Their modern moralities, she thought, were sublime examples of this._

_"O, Tristain, such is fashion!" it was oft—_

Tabitha shuddered as another quake shook the building. This was much too bothersome. It could be left unsaid that disturbing her reading to such extents was cause for ennui. It was the things she thought of as intrinsic that others seemed to think should bear repeating, though.

She endeavoured to find the cause of these disturbances, or, if that failed, then to at least reach an open area where she could call for her Familiar, so it was with swift, careful steps that she wound her way up and through the halls. The cacophony slowly crescendoed as she neared the source, and in less than ten minutes she was above ground once more, resurfacing from an extended trip into the Academy's lesser known, labyrinthine libraries.

She pulled several tomes from pockets carefully sewn into her cloak for just that purpose and tucked them into a neat stack on the floor. She expected things were rather dangerous, and if she got pulled into some sort of skirmish, it would have been rather unbecoming of her if she were to put such valuable keepsakes in undue risk. So in a pile they went.

Her priorities taken care of, Tabitha at last turned to look upon the field. Or, what had been the field at some point. As grim as it was to look upon the field of graves_—_and it was quite grim_—_she assessed that any half-competent Mage could have it all level again within the hour. Regrowing the grass was a smidgen more complicated and difficult, but they already had at least one Mage that was assigned to keeping it all level_—_grass clippings were _so_ unbecoming, after all_—_so she assumed that it could be managed without much difficulty.

Still, the fact that they had let it escalate to such levels spoke volumes of Tristain's mettle. She found the idea that they were comfortable dawdling so much to be a daunting thing to grok. She fully expected that they, 'they' being the teaching staff, were in all likelihood huddled around spying glasses or some such, gawking like fools and twiddling their thumbs at the 'unsafety of attempting to intervene in such a heated debate.'

Tabitha was reminded of her unfortunate location when she was forced to deflect a stray rock with her crook. The reaction had been rushed and very much instinctual; her reaction, whilst saving her life_—_or perhaps simply a bruise_—_was ungraceful enough to shake the spectacles off the bridge of her petite nose. When she pushed them back up, everything came back into focus. God forbid she lose her spectacles; 'specs' or even 'glasses,' Kirche called them, but she insisted on 'spectacles,' if only because she thought it a pretty word_._

Beyond superfluous self-reflections_—_they were a terrible habit of the quiet—Tabitha was, in fact, now clearly able to hear that the 'duel,' as it might be called, was over, if only temporarily. Still, it was enough, and she was curious enough that the identities of the participants intrigued her. A quick cantrip, and she was flying above the field, making certain not to transpose her shadow between the sun and the gathering of people in the middle of the field. To her shock, she noted that the Headmaster's Secretary was crying in such a distraught way as she'd never seen, and that not five paces away lay Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, slumped peacefully on her female Familiar, both of them bedraggled.

And then there was half of her other Familiar. She watched that with rapt attention—watched as he slowly . . . reformed? That wasn't a terribly new thing to her; that was nearly the entire purpose of Water Mages on the battle field, after all. No, what surprised her was that magic seemed to be in no discernible way involved with his recovery. Perhaps Louise's Familiars, and by extension, she herself, were more spectacular than she'd previously thought.

She expected that she would have a wonderful time writing about what she'd witnessed. Certainly it would provide for something more inspired than that rubbish draft she'd been interrupted in re-reading. It amazed her in a less than pleasant way that, given all her experience with books and novels, she just hadn't been able to create a believable distinction between the author and the narrator.

Nonethematter, though. Miss Vallière seemed much more appealing to her than she had ever before. Perhaps she might even be Tabitha's new muse.

* * *

To begin, Tabitha decided, it was always best to start with the setting. She sat quietly at Miss Vallière's table, reading to pass the time. The more expected thing would have been to abut her chair to the maladied party's bed, but that option would have required that she move an unwieldy piece of uniformly grey, difficult-to-describe, furniture in a room that didn't really have any other place for it, so she sat a bit off, at the table, and instead opted to occasionally steal glances at Miss Vallière over the tall back of the grey thing. The next most plausible option available to her if she desired to remain as close as possible to the unconscious girl was to move to the end of the bed and place her chair there, but that spot put her in direct sunlight, and she would not risk exposing the ancient book she was reading at the moment to the sun; that was a surefired way to fade the print. The third most likely—she had had time to consider her options at length—was to lay next to Miss Vallière on one of the couches, but, even to her, that idea was embarrassing, and when she'd first had it she'd blushed at the absurdity of it. She wasn't Kirche, after all—she wasn't one to chase so brazenly after anything that caught her eye.

Perhaps it might be said that she was _just a bit_ like Kirche, though, as she had followed on Miss Vallière's Familiars' coattails as they brought the unconscious girl back to her room. And she had been a bit thoughtless, as she'd only realized that, in their various states of ruin, all of the ones she'd followed desired, or were in need of, an immediate change in their state of dress, after she'd already entered the room. The Familiars had had no compunctions against her remaining in the room as they'd gone about doing it ( and she heard no sigh nor groan ), so she'd been quick to surprise when they went about undressing, and had skittishly vacated the room to retain her shame. Only when they exited the room, making no comment upon seeing her at the door before passing her to be off somewhere, did she enter once more, to the sight of Miss Vallière tossed carelessly on her bed.

The room was quite bizarre. Not in its contents, forgiving the strange furniture previously detailed, but in its atmosphere. It wasn't oppressive or some other ridiculous adjective for a schoolgirl's room, but it was as if apathy had found a home in it. A strange, grey, comfortable apathy. It was like a windowed room that grew chilly on rainy days; uncomfortable at first, but once one found a blanket and a book to curl up with, the chill would melt away, just beyond reach, and the rain-song would become soothing in its soft monotony, leading into a restful, blanketing, blurry embrace where time would slip away like the drops slipping down the roof to cascade by the window for but a brief moment before making quiet splashes and ripples, joining a collective of similar drops where everything was peaceful.

She liked it. It seemed inviting to her. The impression became most visible when one looked to the bed again. The bed, made earlier by a maid, was wrinkled from the presence of Miss Vallière, who was slumped in an uncomfortable looking position. To either side of it were those strange, tall backed pieces of inorganically shaped furniture. Maybe they were couches? The one nearest the window blocked the sun from reaching Miss Vallière, casting a shadow over her pale complexion.

Tabitha wondered if, by the moonlights, Miss Vallière looked as pale as she herself did.

Across the back of the nearer couch were strewn the remains of the tatters that Miss Vallière's Familiars had been wearing. They lay there stiffly, with quickly drying blood, mud, sweat, and viscera slowly dripping and wetting the couch. That was a bit distasteful, and they reeked of something uncomfortably familiar, so she cast a spell to dry them, and another to send them to sit in a porcelain wash basin in the corner. One last spell, and the rusty stains on the couch were lifted out, their particles settled in the basin as well.

The room clean enough not to bother her terribly now, if not in any particular order, she shuffled over to the sleeping complex and leaned over to get a better look at Miss Vallière.

Louise Vallière was a slip of a girl, with long strawberry blonde waves tumbled about her slumped form, but not much could be discerned from her tense, scowling expression beyond subconscious discomfort. Tabitha righted that by briefly Levitating the girl and her comforter, so that she was reclined on her back and tucked in properly. The scowl quickly smoothed back into the vacant emptiness that was sleep's mask.

Tabitha took note of her features, scouring them and putting them to memory. She'd only known enough of the girl's looks to recognize her, as she could with most people, but she knew the minutest of details when it came to anybody interesting she met. She'd immediately done this with Miss Vallière's Familiars, upon their first appearance, but it hadn't been 'till now that the Master actually warranted any specific attention. Previously, she'd simply been a concussively loud failure that read a bit more than was average.

But now—now, she was something of great interest to Tabitha. Louise Vallière might have been her new muse, even, so Tabitha drank deeply of her still figure. The slight, tight lips that pouted slightly even in rest; the pale skin that, just like hers, would burn long before it would tan; the enviable bust—though it should be noted that the chest on any girl over thirteen that she'd ever met was enviable by her standards—that tapered off to a form only slight more developed than her own. Tabitha bent down and spread one of the girl's lids, and noted the bright amber eye that stared unfocused back at her.

Sated with these new sights, and hearing approaching footsteps, Tabitha quickly stepped away from her inspection, seated herself in the nearest chair, and returned to reading. Only moments later, there was a resounding crash as Kirche, her most boisterous and unavoidable of companions, entered the room and managed to slam the door loudly enough to wake the dead souls of three winters past.

From the corner of her spectacles, she saw that Kirche was about to announce her presence to the room, likely expecting something of a comeback from its usual inhabitant.

Tabitha said nothing, turning a page. Kirche's face fell, upon receiving none of the expected argumentation, if only for a moment, but in this moment, everything was silent.

"One of Louise's Familiars told me I'd find you here," she said.

Tabitha turned another page. Kirche sighed at this.

"Sometimes, Tabby, you're no fun. I'd had this long conversation planned out, and I'm sure Louise would have taken with it. She would have said, 'Which one, Zerbst?' in that shrill cry of hers that she gets when she knows she's being teased but doesn't understand what about her is being made fun of, and I would have replied, 'Why, the pretty one, of course.' And, well, you know, they're both quite exquisite, so she would have gotten frustrated and yelled, 'But which one?,' to which I would reply, 'Well, you know, the _pretty_ one,' and she would have grown so perplexed and asked, 'So, then . . . you mean C.C.?' And from there I could have said, 'Why, I'm not sure, Louise. Which one do you think is prettier?' And so forth and so on, teasing her all along the way. And who knows, I might have even found out if she was open to those types of advances! Wouldn't that have been marvelous? But then, of course you don't think so—don't give me that sideways look!—I think I should know by now that you aren't interesting in these sorts of things. Why, I've talked with you for so many days yet, and you haven't even mentioned which hero you would most like, let alone which heroine."

Tabitha went to turn another page, to keep with the rhythm, but realized she hadn't been reading. Thoroughly stumped, she settled on marking her page with a finger and closing the tome, in favour of looking with her full attention to her friend.

"Go on," she said whilst motioning with her eyes that, should Kirche choose to go on, she should close the door behind her and join her at the table. Kirche understood, and did just that, keeping careful to shut the door silently this time.

"What more is there to say, Tabby? There's nothing to elaborate on, as I see it." Kirche sounded somewhat bewildered.

Tabitha shook her head 'no' ever-so-slightly and looked at her friend in the eye for a minute before glancing to rest her gaze upon Miss Vallière for another moment. Once more satisfied by this, she resumed reading.

"Ah, I see," Kirche quietly mumbled to herself, before speaking up again, "So that's how it is. Well, even I make the odd mistake or miscalculation on occasion."

Tabitha nodded and turned another page.

"If that's how it is, then I'll be leaving now. I still need to prepare myself for the Ball, you see. Is there anything you'll be needing? That is, assuming that you're staying here."

"Going? No."

"Are you certain, Tabby? I know for certain that you can be quite charming, if you wish," Kirche pleaded. It should be noted that Tabitha hadn't known what was in her drink at that time.

Tabitha looked back to Miss Vallière again, taking her in once more at length.

"No." She shook her head this time, to drive home the point.

"Pooh. It won't be any fun without you, I'm afraid. But I must be going now. You know how long it takes me to prepare."

Tabitha remained silent as her friend left, and turned another page as she closed the door behind her.

. . . And that, she decided, placed the setting well enough. With the setting, which was really the only thing that was ever interesting in her life, finally understood and laid out well enough, she could sit back and read to whittle away the time between scene changes that, she supposed, most people would call her life. She sat by Miss Vallière's side for several hours soaking in the cool apathy that she'd so lovingly described, and wishing her life, and not its setting, would prove interesting for a change. But wishing and hoping never did anything for her but slow the rate at which she could read, so when it was time for dinner, she slipped away to eat.

Along the way, she also asked a passing woman to send for soup to be sent up to Miss Vallière's room. It was strange, the woman, because Tabitha knew for a fact that she was one of the maids. She could recognize every member of the staff, which is why she'd asked the girl to do a servant's task, as she recalled that the person with the features she'd recognized was a maid named Siesta. Only, she wasn't dressed as a maid, but was plainly garbed. Now, technically speaking, Tabitha could still tell her to do anything she wanted, as the woman was still a Commoner and she was still a Noble, but it gave her pause. Not so for the off-duty maid, however, as she jumped at the casual command and said it would be done 'at the greatest possible expedience which can possibly be achieved without breaking any laws or social norms.'

Siesta, she assumed, was literate, which was, in some locales, a mild crime with disproportionate punishment. But most of those locales had thankfully died away with time, and the few that hadn't were looked down on as savage and frightened. It was a popular saying in Court that 'Commoners are Commoners, not animals.' That wasn't to say that the syllogism really meant anything to those that took it up as their mantra, but it did give them a sense of entitlement, that they could look down on those that oppressed the Commoners from even reading. Not that it mattered much, Tabitha thought, nothing they ever disagreed with ever got put to the press. The only things Nobles ever put in the press were things that followed strict censorship guidelines, and the Commoners that failed to follow those guidelines. Still, the maid had a relatively expansive vocabulary, given what she would legally have access to, so Tabitha figured that she'd either been reading something put out by an underground press run in some Protestant village where neither the Church nor the State could restrict what was printed, or she'd been sneaking books from right out of some Noble's library—maybe even the school's. More power to her, Tabitha figured. She wasn't one to care about foreign affairs, after all.

Dinner was uneventful, seeing how nearly everyone was attending the Ball in the Alvíss dining hall. Well, dinner was served in the Alvíss dining hall, but again, it was uneventful. She slipped in, grabbed her food, maintained a strange eye contact with Kirche from across the hall the entire time she was eating, and then left.

Dinner was uneventful. The Ball was uneventful. Her life was uneventful. But the setting was nice, and perhaps that chill she got as she returned to Miss Vallière's room helped her forget.

Not long after returning, the soup she'd asked for came, carried by another maid, this one in uniform. She didn't jump up to feed Miss Vallière, however, but remained seated and reading for another hour or two, only to put her book down as Kirche approached. She opened the door more quietly this time, but still she jumped when she realized that Tabitha had been staring at her even as she'd opened it. She expected that it looked as if she'd been waiting expectantly for her friend the entire time she was there. Which she had, even if she hadn't been nearly so idle.

"Oh, Tabby, don't scare me like that!"

"Okay."

"I'm serious! You have to stop doing stuff like that, it's not fair!"

"Oh." She tilted her head imperceptibly.

"Yeah, well, it's as fair as it's foul. How about I put it that way? You'll never have your own harem if you don't quit acting so strange to even its most likely candidates."

Tabitha's fingers curled tight in her lap, blushing viciously, as she searched for a proper response. Kirche has such odd ways of phrasing things sometimes, it was really unsettling. But, paradoxically, it also came to her as a comfort, as it was for her peculiarities that she'd ever tolerated Kirche's presence, and, ultimately, it was her peculiarities that won Tabitha over.

"Of course, I'm entirely unserious. Don't be riled so easily. You're like a little bitty kitten when you do: trying so hard to be intimidating that it's entirely lost on you that you are, in fact, an adowable baww of fwuff." Kirche squeezed her cheeks as she said the last part, before closing the door, walking across the room, and doing it to Tabitha's cheeks as well.

Tabitha's fingers—her body language expressed much of the emotion that should have been in her face; it made writing about a character that didn't difficult at best—blushed just a bit more than they already had been. Even as Kirche let go and took a seat across the table from her, she struggled to relax her flustered features. Another erstwhile glance over the brim of her gla—spectacles, that was—at Miss Vallière, and the room in general, helped enough that she could control her hands.

"No, stop," Tabitha mumbled as she returned from self-absorption. Kirche's overflowing positivity was in conflict with the room's apathy, and so her friend's attempts to cheer her fell flat against the might that was Tabitha's newly kindled interest in said unusual atmosphere. In disturbing the subdued silence, Kirche had inadvertently positioned herself atop a mountain-stage in a flat plain, and in so doing become an obstructing smudge upon the otherwise tranquilly unbroken horizon.

"Aha . . ." Kirche stretched the note. It failed to fill the silence, and was all the better for that. Even apathy had its tests, though they tended to be more akin to trying to read with a lone fly in the room and less like Kirche and this moment's poorly suppressed awkwardness.

Maintaining the silence, Tabitha pointed to the cold soup in the middle of the table, and, catching Kirche's eye, pointed to Miss Vallière. Words would have been a more effective medium, but she didn't wish to risk starting a conversation.

"Hmm, I see. Of course, of course." Kirche fished about her person before digging her wand out of her blouse. "Aha! That's where you were," she mumbled upon finding it, before flicking her wand lazily at the bowl of soup and returning it to its uncouth sheath.

"My evening dress hasn't any pockets, I'm afraid," she whispered, as if she were actually apologetic. Her wicked grin gave it away, however.

Wordlessly, Kirche watched as Tabitha spoon fed Miss Vallière a bit of the soup, then closed her jaw and massaged her throat until it went down. Bit by bit, the rest of it went down just as well, though it took some time, and Kirche had to heat it up again sometime towards the end.

As it neared midnight, Kirche left to bed, saying she'd send for someone to get the bowl in the morning.

Tabitha spent the night reading. At some point, thoughtlessly, she moved to be more comfortable on the bed. The candle died out soon after, but heavy eyes didn't notice.

* * *

Tabitha awoke the next morning in her own bed. Getting up, she found the book she'd been reading sitting nearby. She recalled the page she'd been on the night before, and found a note that read:

_Thank you._

—_C.C. & L.L._

Tabitha cast a preservation spell on the note and shut it back in.

She'd never had a bookmark before. That was a change to her life, she supposed. So perhaps there was a time and place for apathy.

She went about her morning routine as usual that day, but, to her, it felt as if it were a new day.

ODD#I(e)/5,iii;66Dsc3179

AN:

I haven't had much time for writing as of late, so pardon the gap, if you will. This one was a bit of a character piece, so it's a bit different. Tell me what you think, if you have a moment.


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